Battle Creek

by Carol Bennett, Kurt Thornton

Overview

Founded in 1831, Battle Creek has transformed itself with a rapidly changing world-from agrarian milling community to manufacturing center to the current morph into a food health research center. For 100 years, "Cereal City" has been connected to ready-to-eat breakfast foods, home to the Post Division of General Foods, Ralston Foods, and the Kellogg Company, making it the largest cereal-producing city in the world. Visitors and residents alike have enjoyed mailing postcards of this dynamic community to friends and family all over the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780738577241
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	12/02/2009
Series:	Postcard History Series
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	1,129,918
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Carol Bennett began collecting stamps as a child and over years of moving around the country with her military husband developed a passion for collecting postcards and Kellogg Company memorabilia. Author of Images of America: Battle Creek and Then & Now: Battle Creek, Kurt Thornton was raised in a household that valued history and as a child helped his mother look for old postcards at garage sales, auctions, and antique markets. The authors met while working at Leila Y. Post Montgomery Hospital (named after cereal manufacturer C. W. Post's wife).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 6

Introduction 7

1 Business, Breakfast, and Industry 9

2 Government 69

3 Health 79

4 Education 97

5 Religion 107

6 People and Events 115

Editorial Reviews

Title: Duo digs up B.C.'s postcard past
Author: Andy Fitzpatrick
Publisher: The Enquirer
Date: 12/4/09

Local author Kurt Thornton still hasn't said everything he wants to about Battle Creek history.

Thornton joined with co-author Carol Bennett to write "Postcard History Series: Battle Creek," a collection of images of historical postcards featuring pictures of Cereal City people, places and events.
The book is Thornton's third on local history for Arcadia Publishing, coming after "Images of America: Battle Creek" and "Then & Now: Battle Creek."

Thornton and Bennett will be signing books Dec. 12 at Barnes & Noble and the Kimball House Museum and then again at the Lakeview Card & Gift Shop on Dec. 19. The book went on sale Wednesday.

"I've done two other books for Arcadia and apparently they sold, so it was making them money," Thornton said Thursday. "So they wanted to do another one."

That was fine with Thornton, who possessed thousands of postcards originally collected by his mother, Frances Thornton.

"My mother collected postcards since she was about 17 or 18, back in the '40s, because it was cheap," he said. "You could have a postcard for five cents."

Sitting in the coffee shop at Barnes & Noble Booksellers on Thursday, mere feet from a large wall mural displaying paintings of the some of the very same postcards found in Thornton and Bennett's book, the authors said they met while working for Leila Hospital in the 1980s.

Bennett said she had a large collection of postcards found at collector shows, online auctioneer eBay and garage sales. She combined those with the Thornton collection to provide the material for the 127-page book.

Title: Duo digs up B.C.'s postcard past
Author: Andy Fitzpatrick
Publisher: The Enquirer
Date: 12/4/2009

Local author Kurt Thornton still hasn't said everything he wants to about Battle Creek history.

Thornton joined with co-author Carol Bennett to write "Postcard History Series: Battle Creek," a collection of images of historical postcards featuring pictures of Cereal City people, places and events.
The book is Thornton's third on local history for Arcadia Publishing, coming after "Images of America: Battle Creek" and "Then & Now: Battle Creek."

Thornton and Bennett will be signing books Dec. 12 at Barnes & Noble and the Kimball House Museum and then again at the Lakeview Card & Gift Shop on Dec. 19. The book went on sale Wednesday.

"I've done two other books for Arcadia and apparently they sold, so it was making them money," Thornton said Thursday. "So they wanted to do another one."


That was fine with Thornton, who possessed thousands of postcards originally collected by his mother, Frances Thornton.


"My mother collected postcards since she was about 17 or 18, back in the '40s, because it was cheap," he said. "You could have a postcard for five cents."


Sitting in the coffee shop at Barnes & Noble Booksellers on Thursday, mere feet from a large wall mural displaying paintings of the some of the very same postcards found in Thornton and Bennett's book, the authors said they met while working for Leila Hospital in the 1980s.


Bennett said she had a large collection of postcards found at collector shows, online auctioneer eBay and garage sales. She combined those with the Thornton collection to provide the material for the 127-page book.

From the Publisher