Background
Hubbard was born in Middletown, Connecticut in 1814. A descendant of George Hubbard who settled at Hartford in 1639 and died in Middletown in 1684, he was the son of Elijah and Lydia (Mather) Hubbard.
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Henry Griswold Hubbard
Edit ProfileEducation
After attending the public schools in his native town until he was fourteen, he prepared for college in Captain Partridge's Military Academy, Norwich, Connecticut, and in Ellington High School, and entered Wesleyan University at Middletown. Poor health compelled him to leave college before graduating.
Career
In 1831 he began working as a clerk in the store of J. & S. Baldwin in Middletown. A few months later he became a clerk in the woolen-goods wholesale house of Jabez Hubbard in New York, but after two years returned to Middletown and opened a drygoods store in partnership with Jesse G. Baldwin. This enterprise must have been successful, for Hubbard saved some money with which he bought stock in the Russell Manufacturing Company of Middletown, and at the age of twenty-one became the manager. This concern was engaged in the manufacture of cotton webbing and for the first few years after Hubbard joined it achieved little success, partly because of the financial stringency of 1837.
About 1841, however, Hubbard applied his inventive powers to the conversion of the existing machinery in his plant to the purpose of reducing India rubber to thread and weaving it into elastic webbing. Up to this time elastic webbing had been made in the United States only on hand looms. Hubbard secured from Scotland a weaver somewhat experienced in this form of textile and the two soon perfected the necessary machines and produced the first successful elastic web woven on power looms. Hubbard is, therefore, looked upon as the pioneer of elastic web manufacture in the United States.
In 1850 he purchased the entire control of the Russell Manufacturing Company and bought the patents of Lewis Hope for improvements in elastic web manufacture. With Hope's assistance he made the business a profitable enterprise. The products of the plant soon included both elastic and non-elastic webbing of almost every variety and pattern. The plant was enlarged continuously.
He was also a director of the Middletown Bank, president and trustee of the Middletown Savings Bank, and director in a number of other corporations.
Achievements
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At the time of Hubbard's death Russell Manufacturing Company employed over a thousand workmen and included three spinning mills containing 15, 000 spindles which produced over a million pounds of double and twisted yarn in a year, and weaving mills containing over 400 looms and 5, 000 shuttles. Not only an extremely efficient merchant but a mechanic as well, Hubbard constantly kept in close touch with the mechanical developments in his plant and patented a number of inventions of his own.
Politics
He was a Democrat in politics. He served one term in the Connecticut Senate in 1866.
Connections
He was married on June 19, 1844, to Charlotte Rosella Macdonough, daughter of Commodore Thomas Macdonough, the hero of the battle of Lake Champlain.
