Abe Martin & his Creator

~by Julia Pearson

Abe Martin is the welcoming mascot to Brown County. Kin Hubbard was the cartooning rock star who brought the lanky character—looking like Uncle Sam’s country cousin—and his cool observations of human nature in plain speech, to daily national newspapers.

Kin Hubbard, born Frank McKinney Hubbard, on September 1, 1868, in Bellefontaine, Ohio, grew up in an eccentric family. He was the youngest in birth order, following Ed, Horace, Josephine, Ada, and Tom. His father, Thomas Hubbard, was a fiercely Democratic newspaper editor, and named Kin after an Ohio politician friend.

Kin’s artistic talents were obvious from a young age. With scissors, he cut finely-detailed silhouettes from paper. He dropped out of school before the seventh grade and began working in a paint shop.

Thought by his family to be a potential newspaper artist, sister Josie paid Kin’s board and tuition to the Jefferson School of Art in Detroit. His attendance didn’t last a week. Eventually returning home, Kin was the official seat duster at Bellefontaine’s Grand Opera House. He wrote to a friend in Indianapolis about a minstrel production, illustrating in the margins of the letter. Impressed with the drawings, the friend showed them to the owner and editor of the Indianapolis News, John H. Holliday. This led to a job and salary of $12 a week in 1891.

After three years, he left for a string of jobs: driving a mule team in Chattanooga, amusement park gatekeeper in Cincinnati, and artist for the Cincinnati Tribune and Mansfield News. He returned to the Indianapolis News, staying from 1901 till his death.

Known for his caricatures of politicians, his cartooning stardom was cemented by Abe Martin, who appeared first on December 17, 1904. On February 3, 1905, Abe moved to Brown County. Hubbard explains: “As a setting for Abe Martin I selected Brown County, a rugged almost mountainous, wooded section of Indiana without telegraphic or railroad connections—a county whose natives for the most part subsist by blackberrying, sassafras-mining, and basket-making.” He added characters named for Bellefontaine acquaintances and jury lists from Kentucky. Abe’s philosophy was humorously expressed in two unrelated sentences and was a daily feature on the back page.

In 1905, Abe’s audience grew when Hubbard released a collection featuring Abe and his sayings. This became a tradition of many years. Hubbard eventually signed with the George Matthew Adams Syndicate, bringing Abe’s wit and wisdom to 200 cities. The column-wide cartoon brought as much as $50 a week from some of the larger papers. Hubbard eventually got a private office at the Indianapolis News, and where he also produced a series of humorous essays for the Sunday section called “Short Furrows.”

Kin married Josephine Jackson, a vivacious and attractive blue-eyed blonde, in Indianapolis on October 12, 1905 at the bride’s home. Winning over her father had taken some time. Father Jackson’s first impression was that Hubbard “looked like an actor.” When Kin heard this, he was delighted. A train trip followed the ceremony, with a stop to introduce Josephine to the Hubbard family. As they approached Bellefontaine, Hubbard told his new wife, who was half his age and just out of Shortridge High School: “Don’t tell my folks yet that your people are Republicans.”

The family history bears out his concern. When Thomas Hubbard, an avowed Democat, was editing a Dayton, Ohio, weekly, the Empire, he was thrown from a two-story window by an angry crowd of opposing political leanings. A well-placed awning of the first story saved him and he moved his family to Bellefontaine and started the Weekly Examiner. The local Democratic citizenry gave him a printing plant so that the Democratic side would be presented in that Republican stronghold. In their new home, neighbors found the family “the best people on earth but the queerest.”

One of the Abe Martin displays upstairs at the Abe Martin Lodge.

Sadly, the Hubbard patriarch died around the time that Josephine and Kin first met. Kin was the only Hubbard progeny to marry, and his mother, Sarah, embraced Josephine with warm affection.

At the time of his marriage, Kin’s salary was increased by $5 to $35. Shortly after, Abe Martin’s sayings were compiled in book form in time for the Christmas buying season. This was such a success that it was done annually for twenty-five years

Josephine and Kin made their home in Irvington, with their family expanding with births of son, Thomas, and daughter, Virginia. The couple made their first auto trip to Nashville, county seat of Brown County, shortly after their purchase of a Buick in 1914.

Kin Junior was born in the spring 1918, a mid-life joy to his father. But tragedy occurred on Decoration Day, 1919. On a return trip from Greencastle, the car left the roadway and plunged down a steep embankment into a creek. Little Kin was thrown from the car and drowned. Two years later, another son died at birth. Hubbard’s life was deeply changed.

After nearly twenty years in Irvington, the Hubbards built a new home on north Meridian Street. It was completed in the autumn of 1929. On the evening of Christmas Day, 1930, Hubbard remarked to his family: “This has been my happiest Christmas.” The next morning, he had a fatal heart attack after getting out of bed. Flags flew at half mast at the Indianapolis City Hall and the State House.

A lasting tribute to Hubbard is his Abe Martin character is the namesake of the Brown County State Park’s Lodge, and the dedication of the State Park was an event of May,1932, on what today is known as Kin Hubbard Ridge, a serious and permanent tip o’ the hat to Abe’s creator.