Frank McKinney Hubbard (September 1, 1868 – December 26, 1930), better known as Kin Hubbard, was an American cartoonist, humorist, and journalist. His most famous work was for "Abe Martin". Introduced in The Indianapolis News in December 1904, the cartoon appeared six days a week on the back page of the News for twenty-six years. The Abe Martin cartoons went into national print syndication in 1910, eventually appearing in some two hundred U.S. newspapers. Hubbard also originated and illustrated a once-a-week humor essay for the "Short Furrows" column in the Sunday edition of the News that went into syndication in 1911. The self-taught artist and writer made more than eight thousand drawings for the Indianapolis News and wrote and illustrated about a thousand essays for the "Short Furrows" column. His first published book was Collection of Indiana Lawmaker and Lobbyists (1903), followed by an annual series of Abe Martin-related books between 1906 and 1930, as well as other works such as Short Furrows (1912) and Book of Indiana (1929). Humorist Will Rogers once declared that Hubbard was "America's greatest humorist".
A few months after introducing his Abe Martin cartoon in 1904, Hubbard moved the setting of his most famous character to the fictional town of Bloom Center in rural Brown County, Indiana. He also added more characters to the cartoon series over the years, typically communicated his many quips and sharp-eyed observations of everyday life by pairing two sentences of humorous, but unrelated observations, in each cartoon. For years after Hubbard's death in 1930, the Indianapolis News and other newspapers continued to print his Abe Martin cartoon series. In 1932, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources dedicated Brown County State Park to Hubbard and named the park's guest accommodations the Abe Martin Lodge. Hubbard was inducted into the Ohio Journalism Hall of Fame in 1939 and the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame in 1967. His humor and quips remain in use and continue to entertain readers through the Abe Martin books, as well as Hubbard's longer essays, cartoons, and other published works.
Early life and education
Frank McKinney Hubbard was born in Bellefontaine, Ohio, on September 1, 1868, and was always called as "Kin". His father, Thomas Hubbard, was the outspoken editor and publisher of the weekly Bellefontaine Examiner. After Grover Cleveland's election as U.S. president in 1884, Thomas Hubbard was appointed as the town's postmaster. Kin's mother, Sarah Jane (Miller) Hubbard, was a homemaker.
Kin Hubbard was the youngest child in the family that included his five older siblings (three boys: Ed, Horace, and Tom; and two girls: Josephine and Ada). He was the only one of the children to marry. Kin was named after Frank McKinney, an Ohio politician who was one of his father's friends.
Hubbard's artistic ability showed at an early age, but he was disinterested in school. Hubbard began drawing around the age of ten or eleven and became a self-taught artist and writer. He had little formal education beyond elementary school and almost no art training. Hubbard left the Bellefontaine schools at the age of thirteen before finishing the seventh grade. Later, he enrolled at the Jefferson School of Art in Detroit, Michigan, but remained in the school for only a few days before he quit.
Marriage and family
Hubbard married Josephine Jackson on October 12, 1905. Jackson was born in Greencastle, Indiana, and moved with her family to Indianapolis, Indiana, during her youth. She graduated from Indianapolis's Shortridge High School and met Hubbard a short time later, when he was thirty-four years old. Kin nicknamed his wife "Tiny" although she was not small in stature.
Kin and Josephine Hubbard were the parents of two surviving children: a son named Thomas, born in 1907, and a daughter named Virginia, who was born in 1909. Kin Hubbard Jr. was killed in an automobile accident in 1919, when he was little more than a year old; another son died at birth in 1921. In 1909, the Hubbard family moved into a newly built home in Irvington, a suburban neighborhood of Indianapolis, and remained there for twenty years. A larger home for the family on North Meridian Street was completed in the fall of 1929.