Stephen Kellogg (1724-1797) was one of 10 children born to Jonathan and Anne (Newton) Kellogg of Colchester, Connecticut. He married Martha Wells in 1752 and the couple had seven children, the oldest of whom were grown up when Stephen and Martha moved north with their remaining children to western Massachusetts. The Kellogs were among the first inhabitants of Shelburne, Massachusetts, established in 1768. Stephen held a number of town offices and served on Shelburne's Committee of Correspondence during the American Revolution. He was among the Minute Men who marched to Boston when word arrived of the fighing at Concord and Lexington. At some point in the early 1780s, Stephen Kellogg moved to western New York state. He died in Middlebury, Wyoming County, New York in 1797.
Stephen's father, Jonathan, enslaved several people in Colchester, some of whom he gave to his children or sold. Stephen seems not to have been among the siblings who received an enslaved person from their father. (Barbara W. Brown and James M. Rose, Black Roots in Southeastern Connecticut, 1650 - 1900, 1980.) There is evidence that Stephen enslaved at least one person during the time he lived in Shelburne. In 1777, the town authorized payment for men enlisting in the Continental Army, "allowing Mr. Stephen Kellogg for his Negro man, Charles, as much as the others have." (History and Tradition of Shelburne, Massachusetts, 1958, p. 109). Charles may have been the same person who appeared in a 1771 entry crediting Kellogg for cash paid by "yr Negro" in John and Eunice Williams' day book for their store in Deerfield, Massachusetts.
operson_detail.html