Wednesday, August 02, 2017

Watson Hubbard, Sandusky Businessman


Watson Hubbard was born in Bloomfield, Connecticut on July 11, 1819. He married Georgiana A. Holcomb in 1845. Mr. and Mrs. Watson Hubbard, along with Watson’s brother Langdon, moved to Lexington, Michigan in 1848, where the brothers began work in the lumber business. The lumber business they founded developed into the firm of R.B. Hubbard and Company. 

Watson Hubbard moved to Sandusky, Ohio in 1860, where he lived with his family in the West House for eight years. He had a house built at the northwest corner of Wayne and Jefferson Streets, just down the block from the home of his cousin, Lester S.Hubbard. Watson Hubbard served as Director and Vice President of the Second National Bank, and he was on the Board of Directors of the Sandusky Plow Company and the Nes Silicon Steel Works. He was among the earliest contributors to Good Samaritan Hospital. 

Watson and Georgiana Hubbard had three children, but only one survived to adulthood, Elizabeth Hubbard. Elizabeth married Jay Caldwell Butler, a Civil War Veteran who ran a business in Sandusky that manufactured sashes, doors, blinds and other wooden items. Pictured below are the daughter and granddaughter of Mr. and Mrs. Watson Hubbard, Mrs. Elizabeth Hubbard Butler and Mrs. Elizabeth Butler Harten.


In 1955, the former home of Watson Hubbard and his descendants, at 429 Wayne Street, was razed, to make room for an office for the telephone company. Before the house was razed, a neighbor, Mary Dauch, made this sketch of the home at 429 Wayne Street.



To read a biographical sketch about Watson Hubbard, written by his daughter Elizabeth, see the April 1925 issue of the FirelandsPioneer.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What is the Firelands Pioneer?

Sandusky Library Archives Research Center said...

The Firelands Pioneer is a journal, founded in 1858, that documents the history and genealogy of the Firelands and its people. (The Firelands is the western end of the Connecticut Western Reserve in Ohio, consisting primarily of Erie and Huron Counties.) You can read full text editions of early volumes of the Firelands Pioneer at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/firelandspioneer1866fire.