Hubbard

Hubbard has worn three names. The Handbook of Texas says the community, started around 1860, was called Slap-out and McLainsboro before the Cotton Belt placed a depot here in 1881. At a town meeting that year, attended by former governor Richard B. Hubbard, it was renamed for him. F. A. Taulman became the first mayor, and J. B. and Eugene McDaniel opened the first store. Notable residents have included Baptist minister J. Frank Norris, baseball player Tris Speaker, federal judge Sam Johnson, and Hiram W. Evans, who became national leader of the white-supremacist Ku Klux Klan.

What the plaque says

Hubbard Founded 1881, as a shipping center and supply point on the St. Louis and Southwestern Railway. Named for Richard B. Hubbard (1832-1901), colonel in the 22nd Texas Infantry during the Civil War; Texas Governor 1876-1879; United States Minister to Japan 1885-1889. Banking and market town. Has mineral waters. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 20 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 20 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Hill County Courthouse — 23 mi
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.
• Old Fort Parker — 24 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.

More markers nearby

• Hubbard City News — steps away
• Hometown of Tris Speaker — steps away
• Hot Mineral Water Well — 0.3 mi
• Former Site of Liberty Hill Settlement — 3.7 mi