Food History

Marshall is home to the famous Schuler's Restaurant which has been providing a world-class dining experince for over 100 years. In 1909, Albert Schuler started a cigar store, and soon added billiard tables, a bakery, and a lunch counter. As an additional venture, he purchased the Garrick Café in 1917, which he operated with a partner. The specialty of Albert's 30-seat eatery was a 25-cent blue-plate dinner.

In 1920, he purchased a hotel with a small dining room on Main Street, and named it The Albert. By 1924, with $5,000 in savings as a down payment, Albert was ready to expand his business. He sold the hotel on Main Street, purchased the larger Royal Hotel and Restaurant, and immediately changed the name to Schuler's. Since this time, Schuler's has remained a family business with Win, Hans, and now 4th generation Larry involved in operations.

Just down the road from Schuler's in Battle Creek, is one of the world’s most recognizable brands, the Kellogg Company. Consumers around the world are enjoying Kellogg products, one of which – Kellogg’s Corn Flakes® – has been part of a healthy, delicious morning for over a century. The company that makes breakfast and snacks for millions began with only 44 employees in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1906. Today Kellogg Company manufactures in 18 countries and sells its products in more than 180 countries.

With the discovery of toasted wheat flakes, the process for developing what would become Kellogg’s Corn Flakes® was put into place. In the late 1800s at the Battle Creek Sanatorium, a combination hospital and health spa for the elite and famous, W.K. Kellogg, business manager, and his brother, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, chief physician, were in the process of cooking some wheat for a type of granola when they were called away. When they returned, the wheat had become stale. They decided to force the tempered grain through the rollers anyway, and, surprisingly, the grain did not come out in long sheets of dough. Instead each wheat berry was flattened and came out as a thin flake. W.K. Kellogg continued with his own experiments, developing the process for flaking corn in 1898. This led to the formation of the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company in 1906, which eventually became Kellogg Company – changing the form of breakfast forever and setting into motion a century of innovation for Kellogg.

The area is proud to have forward thinkers such as the Schuler and Kellogg families. The innovation does not stop there. In early 2010, with continued reports of food contamination, food safety became a focus of our scientific community. Battle Creek is now home to The National Center for Food Protection and is excited to play a role in improving our nation's food system and protection of the food supply.

Underground R.R.

Marshall was a station on the Underground Railroad and a strong anti-slavery town. In 1846 Kentucky slave chasers tried to capture escaped slave Adam Crosswhite and his family in Marshall. Leading citizens in turn arrested the Kentuckians and smuggled the Crosswhite family into Canada.The rescuers were convicted of "depriving a man of his rightful property" in Detroit federal court in 1847. They paid fines which they were to consider a badge of honor. The Crosswhite Incident is mentioned on several of the dozens of historical markers the town boasts. A few years ago the Marshall Historical Society marked Crosswhite's grave (he had returned to Marshall after the Civil War) where he rests a few hundred feet from several of his rescuers.

Highways

Marshall has always been a transportation hot spot. Prior to and during the Civil War, Marshall became the switching center for the young Michigan Central Railroad. Marshall is also home to the country's oldest and strongest railroad unions, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. The Union was founded in 1863 and initially went by the name of Brotherhood of the Footboard.

Marshall was a railroad hub, but also was a pass through of the states first major highways. As traffic increased and needs changed, our current major highways were formed. Still today, Marshall conveniently sits at the cross section of 2 major Interstates 69 and 94 which continue to make Marshall a transportation hot spot.

Scholars

Marshall is proud to claim Rev. John D. Pierce and lawyer Issac E. Crary, who are responsible for innovating the Michigan public school system and established it as part of the state constitution.

Their method and format were later adopted by all the states in the old Northwest Territory and became the foundation for the U.S. Land Grant Act in 1861, which established schools like Michigan State University all over the country. Pierce became the country's first state superintendent of public instruction and Crary became Michigan's first member of the U.S. House.