Kiwi icons: The man who helped invent Weet-Bix - Grave Story 105

Kiwi kids grew up on Weet-bix. It’s been a staple of our households for decades. Dry biscuits to which you add anything you like and there’s breakfast.
It was Edward Clarence Halsey who helped bring it about.
A Seventh-day Adventist, Halsey was born in the United States on November 5, 1869. He trained as a baker under another name you might recognise, Doctor John Kellogg, at the Battle Creek Sanitarium making health foods.
Halsey was invited to Australia by a pastor - in part to make granose - or what would become Weet-Bix. He was the first baker employed by the Sanitarium Health Food Company.
The Weet-Bix we know today was developed by Bennison Osborne from the granose biscuits Halsey had made.
Halsey began working for the Australian Union Conference at Northcote, a suburb of Melbourne. In March 1898, it was reported that they were making Granola, Caramel Cereal, and Nut Butter.
He married Sarah Jane Jeannie Mansell (called Jeannie) in 1898 but she died in 1900 after contracting blood poisoning.
After losing his wife, Halsey accepted an invitation to transfer with his young son Vernon to Papanui in Christchurch. They left Sydney on December 27, 1900, travelling via Hobart, Tasmania, and Bluff. They arrived at Lyttelton, disembarking on January 11, 1901 where he set himself up in a small building in Papanui.
He met and married Alice Louisa Merab Knight in 1902. After working for eight years in Christchurch, Halsey travelled with his son in March 1908 to visit family relatives in the United States, leaving his wife, Alice, in Christchurch. He was away for some nine months.
When the Sanitarium Health Food Company built their new factory in 1920 there was no further work for Halsey even though he had developed many of the products that were to be manufactured.
Now Weet-Bix is on the shelf in every supermarket in New Zealand.
It was also Sanitarium who first imported marmite into New Zealand obtaining the sole rights in 1908.
Halsey died on November 5, 1926, of a wasting disease and was buried in Bromley Cemetery, Christchurch.