A Crop of Trout

Elijah Chapman Kellogg and Fish Breeding in 19th-century Connecticut

By Candice C. Brashears - Connecticut Historical Society

Published: Apr 08, 2011

Slideshow

E. C. Kellogg. The Trout. Oil on canvas.

The Connecticut Historical Society

The Angler. Hand-colored lithograph by Kellogg & Comstock, 1850-1851

The Connecticut Historical Society, 1955.15.2. Gift of Samuel St. John Morgan.

Double Fishing. Hand-colored lithograph by Kelloggs & Comstock, 1848-1850.

The Connecticut Historical Society, 1956.83.30. Gift of Samuel St. John Morgan

Portrait of E. C. Kellogg. Photograph, ca. 1860.

Heading for one of Connecticut’s eleven stocked trout parks?

Elijah Chapman Kellogg (1811-1881), artist and partner in the Kellogg brothers’ lithographic firm in Hartford, was an avid sports fisherman and expert angler – and one of the first in America to experiment in artificial fish-breeding.

Inspired by successful European artificial fish breeding operations, E.C. Kellogg and D.W. Chapman of New York began experimenting with trout breeding on Salmon Brook, Simsbury in 1855. The following year, Kellogg built a fish hatchery in the cellar of his Main Street home in Hartford. Imagine Kellogg handling squirming trout, expressing their eggs and milt, and ardently observing the hatching of his 5/8” finny brood!

Kellogg gained national attention when the Connecticut Agricultural Society’s Transactions of 1856, published Kellogg’s “Experiments in Artificial Fish-Breeding”. Kellogg likened fish breeding to agriculture: prepare the field (pond), plant the bed (eggs) and harvest the crop (trout). Kellogg’s article led to the establishment of additional fish hatcheries in Connecticut within the year.

By 1859, one enterprising Yankee, Samuel Colt (the Hartford gun maker), arranged for a trout hatchery in East Hartford, which Kellogg managed. In 1860, the Hartford Times and the American Stock Journal eagerly reported Kellogg’s voyage to France to study scientific and practical methods of fish breeding in order to “plant a crop” of trout at East Hartford.

Bucolic to comic, the fishing theme appears in several Kellogg lithographic prints found in the Connecticut Historical Society collection. E. C. Kellogg also executed an exquisite small oil painting of a trout, perhaps one of those that he so successfully propagated.