WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH: Derby native was businesswoman, conservationist (video)

By Ann DeMatteo
Assistant Metro Editor
Editor’s note: The theme of the 2012 National Women’s History Month is “Women’s Education — Women’s Empowerment.” Throughout March, the Register will look at the accomplishments of female trailblazers and will feature stories about today’s area women of note. We begin with a stop along the Connecticut Women’s Heritage Trail.


DERBY — By today’s standards or yesteryear’s, Frances Osborne Kellogg was an extraordinary woman.
Before women had the right to vote, Kellogg took over her father’s companies after he died in 1907, despite the suggestion from the judge of probate that she and her mother, Ellen, sell the companies, said Patricia Sweeney, the reference and local history librarian at Derby Neck Library, a place founded by residents including Wilbur Osborne, the father of Frances Osborne Kellogg.
“She’s very petite and pretty and dressed in Manhattan fashions,” said Sweeney, who is writing a book about Kellogg. “She would be not quite 31, and she and mother were called in with attorneys, bankers and CEOs of the various companies, and the judge of probate suggested she sell them and live off profits and then go to college, and she said, ‘Sell them? No. I intend to run them.’”

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