Hubbard

and of the American Telephone Historical Collection
in New York.] W.CL.

HUBBARD, GURDON SALTONSTALL

(Aug. 22, i8o2~Sept. 14, 1886), fur trader, pio-
neer merchant and meat packer, was born in
Windsor, Vt, the son of Elizur and Abigail
(Sage) Hubbard and a descendant of Gurdon
Saltonstall [#.^.] and of George Hubbard who
settled first at Wethersfield and died at Guil-
ford, Conn., in 1683. From his early youth his
life was one of adventure. After schooling in
private and common schools in Vermont, he was
taken to Montreal. There he showed a preco-
cious aptitude for trade and at the age of sixteen
apprenticed himself for five years to the Amer-
ican Fur Company, leaving Montreal to accom-
pany the voyageurs of that organization through
the waters traveled a century and a half before
by La Salle. Possessed of a forceful and engag-
ing personality, he won the confidence of the
Indians, who called him "Pa-pa-ma-ta-be," "The
Swift Walker/' After completing his appren-
ticeship, he was formally appointed to conduct a
trading station on the Iroquois River in Illinois.
Later he became superintendent of all the Amer-
ican Fur Company's posts in that region. Dur-
ing the next few years he made frequent trips to
Mackinac Island, the headquarters of John Jacob
Astor, and covered the country from the straits
of Mackinac south to Kankakee and Danville. In
1827 he was admitted to a share in the profits
of the company, and in 1828 bought out its entire
interests in Illinois.

Hubbard was one of the last representatives
in Illinois of the trader who carried on commerce
through barter. Although Danville was his offi-
cial headquarters, Chicago was the point to
which his supplies were brought by water and
from which his furs were shipped to the East.
On one occasion he scuttled his boats in the
south branch of the Chicago River and, proceed-
ing on foot to Big Foot's Lake, procured pack
ponies and wended his way to the Wabash, dot-
ting the plain with trading posts. The trail he
blazed, known as Hubbard's Trail, was for years
the only well-defined road between Chicago and
the Wabash country. This most picturesque pe-
riod of his life came to an end with the cessation
of the fur trade in Illinois. It was during the
transition from the fur trade to more general
commerce that he had the foresight to develop a
new avenue of trade by using the growing sur-
plus of hogs in the Wabash country to supply the
growing frontier towns. He was the first to see
the possibility of establishing a meat-packing in-
dustry in Chicago by utilizing the livestock of
the Middle West He understood the funda-

Hubbard

mental economic factors underlying the packing
industry, although his actual processing was
primitive compared to the complicated and sci-
entific methods of the twentieth century.

In 1834 he moved his permanent residence to
Chicago and eventually became one of the largest
meat packers in the western country. Not only
did he furnish the western settlements with pork,
but he developed a system of transportation on
the Great Lakes whereby he shipped barreled
pork and tierced lard in sailing vessels to Buf-
falo and points east. His transportation com-
pany, known as the Eagle Line, connecting Chi-
cago, Buffalo, and the upper Lakes, was the first
general systematic carrying service touching
Chicago and did much to develop the general
trade of the region.

Another of Hubbard's contributions to the de-
velopment of Chicago was due to his foresight
in seeing that the future of the city depended
upon a network of transportation facilities
stretching out in every direction. His fur-trad-
ing experience had taught him the need of a
canal penetrating the western country. There-
fore, while representing Vermilion County in
the state legislature in 1832-33, he introduced a
bill providing for the construction of the Illinois
and Michigan Canal, and upon its defeat, substi-
tuted a bill for a railroad, which was defeated
by the vote of the presiding officer. After he left
the legislature he continued to urge upon suc-
ceeding sessions the passage of a canal bill until
such a bill actually became law in 1836. To him
in large part Chicago is indebted for the loca-
tion of the terminus of the canal well within Illi-
nois, instead of at Calumet, Ind. The canal was
begun in 1836 and was finished in 1848 and its
importance to Chicago cannot easily be exag-
gerated. That city became at once the pivotal
point for the commerce of the lower Mississippi
Valley which had theretofore gone to New Or-
leans and a gateway for the emigration which
was to people the untraveled areas of the Far
West

Foreseeing the amazing growth of Chicago,
Hubbard, with others, built an immense ware-
house and packing plant at La Salle and South
Water Streets, where he stored pork greatly in
excess of the needs of the town itself and utilized
the supplies built up during the winter to carry
on his trade throughout the year. This struc-
ture was known as Hubbard's Folly, but in it
was established the first bank in Chicago, in
December 1835, and from it Hubbard issued the
first insurance policy ever written in that city.
He was one of the incorporators of the first
water-works, and one of the leading philanthro-

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