The Hubbard Family
To know the whole story of the Hubbard family, one must take a trip backward through time to the Ninth Century A.D. It is there that the first recorded history of the family appears, in the persons of Ragnar Lodbrog, a Viking Sea-King, and his two sons Hingua and Hubba. In those days, the shores of the Baltic, the Orkneys, the Hebrides, Scotland and Ireland all suffered at their hands. In France during 845 A.D. they devastated both banks of the Seine, all the way up to Paris, which they conquered. That city was saved from destruction by the payment to the Vikings of 7000 pounds of silver—truly an enormous ransom. A favorite tactic of Ragnar’s, as it is told, was to attack Christian cities during their feast-days, while most of the soldiers were in church.
Years after the taking of Paris, Ragnar and his sons took part in an invasion of England in 866 AD, during which Ragnar was taken prisoner and killed. Later, his sons avenged his death by capturing a large portion of eastern England and taking control of it. Next, they successfully attacked southern England, capturing still more territory.
In 878, Hingua and Hubba, with a fleet of 23 ships, ravaged the coast of South Wales; it was there that Hubba met his end during a counterattack by his enemy Odun, the Saxon leader. There, Odun captured Hubba’s flag, the standard of Ragnar, upon which was the woven image of a raven.
Later that year, Hingua invaded Ireland and was killed there. Subsequently, the descendents of Hingua and Hubba embraced England as their home, and made their lives there. According to “One Thousand Years of Hubbard History” by Edward Warren Day (1895), the families acquired an interest in English soil and thereafter helped defend England against subsequent invaders. They were loyal to their adopted country and during Britain’s advance toward commercial and agricultural supremacy became her most skilled and reliable husbandmen. The Hubbard family claims Hubba as their first recorded ancestor, and the source for the family name.
The Hubbard family is one of the oldest New England families, having been here for almost four hundred years—in fact, the Hubbards have been in the New Haven area for over three hundred years! The earliest person named Hubbard, according to Day’s book, is John Hubbard of Monks Eleigh, Suffolk, born in 1230 AD. A survey of genealogies on www.ancestry.com shows that any Hubbard who traces their history back this far invariably traces it to this John Hubbard.
By the mid to late 1500’s, many Hubbards had become Protestants and were persecuted under Queen Mary I of England. Although Queen Elizabeth I ended this persecution, subsequent reforms in the Church of England displeased many Protestants. Hubbards were among the earliest English settlers of New England, coming to America as part of the Protestant migration from England in the early 1600’s.
It is through such as the Hubbard family ancestors that we can trace the events of the early days of New England, and the birth of an American nation. The first Hubbard ancestor to arrive in New England was William Hubbard (1594-1670) who sailed on the Defence and arrived in the Massachusetts Bay in 1635. He became a road surveyor for the fledgling colony, and a Magistrate Deputy of the General Court. His son, Rev. William Hubbard, Jr. was a Puritan minister in Ipswich Massachusetts.
The first Hubbard ancestor to reside in Connecticut was Dr. (Col.) John Hubbard, a physician, poet and judge in New Haven; he graduated from Yale with a masters degree in 1730, and subsequently fought in the French and Indian War. His son Rev. John Hubbard Jr. also graduated from Yale, and became the minister for the First Congregational Church of Meriden.
To be continued.