In 1846, Hubbard married Gertrude Mercer McCurdy (1827–1909), the daughter of
Robert Henry McCurdy, a prominent New York City businessman, and Gertrude Mercer Lee, who was the niece of
Theodore Frelinghuysen, a United States Senator and former vice presidential candidate. Her brother,
Richard Aldrich McCurdy, served as president of
Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York. • Robert Hubbard (1847–1849), who died young. • Gertrude McCurdy Hubbard (1849–1886), who married Maurice Neville Grossmann (1843–1884) •
Mabel Gardiner Hubbard (1859–1923), who married
Alexander Graham Bell, the son of
Alexander Melville Bell, in 1877. • Roberta Wolcott Hubbard (1859–1885), who married
Charles James Bell (1858–1929), son of
David Charles Bell and a cousin of Alexander Graham Bell, in 1881. • Grace Hubbard (1865–1948), who married her sister Roberta's husband,
Charles, in 1887 after Roberta's death during childbirth in 1885. • Marian Hubbard (1867–1869), who also died young. Gardiner Hubbard's daughter Mabel became deaf at the age of five from
scarlet fever. She later became a student of
Alexander Graham Bell, who taught deaf children, and they eventually married. Hubbard's house on Brattle Street in Cambridge (on whose lawn, in 1877, Hubbard's daughter Mabel married Alexander Graham Bell) no longer stands. But a large beech tree from its garden still (in 2011) remains. To service his then-modern Cambridge house, Hubbard wanted gas lights, the then-new form of illumination. So he founded the Cambridge Gas Company, now part of
NSTAR. After he moved to Washington, D.C., from Cambridge in 1873, Hubbard subdivided his large Cambridge estate. On Hubbard Park Road and Mercer Circle (Mercer was his wife's maiden name), he built large houses designed for Harvard faculty. On nearby Foster Street, he built smaller houses, still with modern amenities, for "the better class of mechanic." This neighborhood west of Harvard Square in Cambridge is now both popular and expensive. He died on December 11, 1897, at
Twin Oaks, his residence in the
Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C. His funeral was held at the Church of the Covenant in Washington, where he was president of the board of trustees. His widow died in a car accident on October 20, 1909, in Washington.
Descendants Through his daughter Gertrude, he was the grandfather of Gertrude Hubbard Grossmann (1882–1919), who married Peter Stuyvesant Pillot (1870–1935), at Hubbard's home, Twin Oaks, in 1903. Their daughter, Rosalie Pillot (1907–1959) was married to Lewis Rutherfurd Stuyvesant (1903–1944), the son of
Rutherfurd Stuyvesant, in 1925. After giving birth to a son, they divorced in 1935. Through his daughter Mabel, he was the grandfather of Elsie May Bell (1878–1964), who married
Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor of
National Geographic fame, Marian Hubbard "Daisy" Bell (1880–1962), who was married to
David Fairchild. and two boys who died in infancy (Edward in 1881 and Robert in 1883). Through his daughter Roberta, he was the grandfather of
Grace Hubbard Bell (1883–1979), who was married to
Granville Roland Fortescue (1875–1952), an American soldier and
Rough Rider who was the cousin of
Theodore Roosevelt and son of
Robert Roosevelt (born while his biological father was married to his first wife but adopted by him following her death and his marriage to his mother). Grace was the mother of three girls, Marion Fortescue, who married Daulton Gillespie Viskniskki in 1934,
Thalia Fortescue Massie (1911–1963), and Kenyon Fortescue Reynolds (1914–1990), better known as actress
Helene Whitney.
Legacy Gardiner Hubbard's life is detailed in the book
One Thousand Years of Hubbard History, by Edward Warren Day. He was portrayed by a suitably bewhiskered
Charles Coburn in the popular biopic
The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939). In 1890,
Mount Hubbard on the
Alaska–
Yukon border was named in his honor by an expedition co-sponsored by the
National Geographic Society while he was president. The
Hubbard Glacier (Greenland) was named after him by
Robert Peary. Hubbard's heirs purchased a site at the corner of 16th and M Streets in Washington, D.C. for the purpose of establishing a
headquarters for the National Geographic Society and as a memorial to its founder. It and the main school building at the Clarke School for the Deaf are named after him in his honor. In 1899, a new school on Kenyon Street in Washington, D.C., was named the Hubbard School in his honor as one of the "most public-spirited men of the District, never neglecting an opportunity to advance its interests, but was also a man of great learning and earnestly interested in all educational movements. Mr. Hubbard was the president of the National Geographic Society, a man prominent in science and a man of the highest character." The school has since been closed and demolished. == See also ==