Nathaniel M. Hubbard

Hubbard graduated from Alfred University in 1853 and studied law in Hornellsville, New York.[1] He served as Captain[2] and mustered a company in the Twentieth Iowa Regiment during the Civil War.[1]

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He began his practice of law in Marion, Iowa in 1854 after arriving from New York.[3][4] Hubbard was a trial lawyer known for his sarcasm. His first reported case was on behalf of State of Iowa, for whom he prosecuted an alleged bootlegger in 1857.[5] Later, Hubbard represented the City of Cedar Rapids in its annexation of the City of Kingston which at the time lay on the southwest side of the Cedar River.[6][7]

Hubbard represented a pioneering land developer, the Iowa Railroad Land Company, which sold land near the railway to the incoming settlers.[8] He represented the Iowa Falls and Sioux City Railroad,[9] a line that would run through Hubbard, Iowa, a town that was named after Hubbard upon its incorporation in 1881.[10] Hubbard served as Iowa Counsel for the Chicago and North Western Railway in a case where a train whistle startled a team of horses causing injury to the buggy occupants.[11] The Supreme Court's opinions in that case (which was twice tried and twice appealed) analyzed the competing interests between the dominant modes of transportation, and were a significant victory for the railroad.[12]

Hubbard died from injuries inflicted by a runaway horse in 1902.[13]