Gardiner G. Hubbard

Gardiner Greene Hubbard (August 25, 1822 – December 11, 1897) was an American lawyer, financier, and community leader. He was a founder and first president of the National Geographic Society; a founder and the first president of the Bell Telephone Company which later evolved into AT&T (at times the world's largest telephone company); a founder of the journal Science; and an advocate of oral speech education for the deaf.

One of his daughters, Mabel Gardiner Hubbard, married Alexander Graham Bell.

Early life

Hubbard was born, raised and educated in Boston, Massachusetts, to Samuel Hubbard (June 2, 1785 – December 24, 1847), a Massachusetts Supreme Court justice, and Mary Ann Greene (April 19, 1790 – July 10, 1827). His younger brother was Charles Eustis Hubbard (1842–1928), who later became the first secretary and clerk of the Bell Telephone Company.

Hubbard was a grandson of Boston merchant Gardiner Greene. He was also a descendant of Lion Gardiner, an early English settler and soldier in the New World who founded the first English settlement in what later became the State of New York, and whose legacy includes Gardiners Island which remains in the family.

He attended Phillips Academy, Andover, and graduated from Dartmouth in 1841. He then studied law at Harvard, and was admitted to the bar in 1843.

Career

He first settled in Cambridge and joined the Boston law firm of Benjamin Robbins Curtis. There he became active in local institutions. Hubbard helped establish a city water works in Cambridge, was a founder of the Cambridge Gas Co. and later organized a Cambridge to Boston trolley system. Hubbard also played a pivotal role in the founding of Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was the first oral school for the deaf in the United States, and Hubbard remained a trustee for the rest of his life.