Hubbs

f. of Ipswich, Essex, and Hamilton (1834)* pp.
33; W. B, Sprague, Annals Am. Pulpit, vol. I (1857) ',
Boston News-Letter, Sept. 18, 1704.3 V.F,B<

HUBBS, REBECCA (Dec. 3, ijTa-Sept 29,
1852), Quaker preacher, was born in Burlington
County, N. J.» the daughter of Paul and Rebecca
(Hewlings) Crispin, and the fourth in descent
from William Crispin, a captain in the British
Navy, whose son Silas came to Philadelphia with
William Penn in 1682. Though her father, who
kept a ferry and tavern near Moorestown, was
indulgent to her, Rebecca's early life was
wretched and unpromising. The chief thing that
she remembered from her childhood was that
someone had taught her to pick out a few tunes
on a dulcimer and that she had liked to sing and
play for her father's guests* In later life her
conscience reproached her also for her early
acquaintance with cards and dancing. Adoles-
cence brought with it a deep concern for her
spiritual welfare, but her mean attire and lack
of a bonnet made her ashamed to attend the near-
by Baptist church. She ventured finally into
a Quaker meeting, was received with kindness
and sympathy, and so returned to the beliefs and
practices of her ancestors. Soon after her con-
version she married Paul Hubbs and went to
Salem County to live. In 1803 °r i&>4 she be-
gan to speak m meeting. At Haddonfield, Cam-
den County, she was accredited in April 1807 as
a minister, and the next year she returned with
her husband and children to Woodstown, Salem
County, which was her home for the rest of her
long life. In the spring of 1813, with the consent
of the Woodstown Meeting, she set out on the
first of a series of journeys that made her one of
the most widely known ministers of her sect.
Traveling by boat or carriage, on horseback, or
afoot, she visited meetings in Virginia (1813),
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana (1814), be-
sides making other shorter visits to Delaware,
eastern Pennsylvania, and various parts of New
Jersey. At the prompting of the Inner Light, she
overcame her diffidence sufficiently, on her first
journey, to seek out the President and admonish
him about the war. At Montpelier, Mr. and Mrs.
Madison received her and her companion with
unaffected kindness and parted with them as
friends, Mr. Madison accompanying her to her
carriage and depositing in it a large basket of
provisions. The source of Mrs. Hubbs's influence
seems to have lain in simple goodness and sin-
cerity, for she was so humble and unlettered that
to the end of her days she had difficulty in man-
aging even ordinary conversation, Such frag-
mei&s of her journals as survive testify to her
conapasskm for the Negro slaves and to her ap-

Hubert

preciation of natural beauty, especially of the
lofty heights of the Alleghanies and the broad
expanse of the Potomac below Mount Vernon.
Of her mystic experiences, however, she writes
in the unimaginative, conventionalized language
common to Quaker biographies. For two years
before her death she suffered from slight but
recurring strokes of paralysis.

[A Memoir of Rebecca Hubbs (Phila., n.d,, copr.
1880); W. F. Crispin, Biog. and Hist. Sketch of Capt.
Wm. Crispin of the British Navy (Akron, Ohio, 1901) ;
The Friend (Tenth Month 23, 1852).] G.H.G.

HUBERT, CONRAD (i8ss-Mar. 14, 1928),
inventor, was born in Minsk, Russia, the son of
Russian Jewish parents. His name was Akiba
Horowitz, but on coming to the United States he
changed it to Conrad Hubert. His father was a
wine merchant and distiller, an occupation in
which the family had been engaged for several
generations. Hubert attended Hebrew school
until the confirmation age of thirteen and im-
mediately thereafter—he is said to have had an
unusually mature mind for his age—went of his
own accord to Berlin, Germany, to study the
liquor distillation processes as practised there.
He devoted six years to this study, working at
odd jobs to support himself, and in 1874 returned
to Minsk to become his father's partner. Soon
he began applying the methods he had so thor-
oughly learned. He extended the business to
various cities in Russia, and in the course of the
succeeding fifteen years was highly successful
and gained for himself a wide reputation as a
business man. Meanwhile, the position of the
Jew in Russia had become especially difficult and
he decided to go elsewhere. After liquidating
all of his commercial holdings he possessed hard-
ly more than enough money for his passage to
the United States. He arrived in New York
about 1890, merely another immigrant there
though a man of repute in Russia, without friend
or relative, yet hopeful of engaging in the busi-
ness he knew. The opportunity did not exist,
however, and in order to support himself Hubert
was compelled to start anew in other fields. For
six or eight years, therefore, he tried successive-
ly operating a cigar store, a restaurant, a board-
ing house, a farm, a milk wagon route, and fi-
nally a jewelry store. About 1898 his attention
was called to an electrical device for lighting gas.
While it was very crude, the idea it embodied
appealed to him. Purchasing the device, he pro-
ceeded to perfect it and then applied for a patent,
which was granted on Mar. 6, 1900, patent No.
644,860. He began immediately to manufacture
his gas lighter, selling it himself. He also turned
his attention to the invention of other electrical

334