Frank McKinney Hubbard, better known as Kin Hubbard, was an American cartoonist, humorist, and journalist. His most famous work was for "Abe Martin". Introduced in The Indianapolis News in December 1904, the cartoon appeared six days a week on the back page of the News for twenty-six years.

Early life and education

Frank McKinney Hubbard was born in Bellefontaine, Ohio, on September 1, 1868, and was always called as "Kin". His father, Thomas Hubbard, was the outspoken editor and publisher of the weekly Bellefontaine Examiner. After Grover Cleveland's election as U.S. president in 1884, Thomas Hubbard was appointed as the town's postmaster. Kin's mother, Sarah Jane (Miller) Hubbard, was a homemaker.

Kin Hubbard was the youngest child in the family that included his five older siblings (three boys: Ed, Horace, and Tom; and two girls: Josephine and Ada). He was the only one of the children to marry. Kin was named after Frank McKinney, an Ohio politician who was one of his father's friends.

Hubbard's artistic ability showed at an early age, but he was disinterested in school. Hubbard began drawing around the age of ten or eleven and became a self-taught artist and writer. He had little formal education beyond elementary school and almost no art training. Hubbard left the Bellefontaine schools at the age of thirteen before finishing the seventh grade. Later, he enrolled at the Jefferson School of Art in Detroit, Michigan, but remained in the school for only a few days before he quit.

Marriage and family

Hubbard married Josephine Jackson on October 12, 1905. Jackson was born in Greencastle, Indiana, and moved with her family to Indianapolis, Indiana, during her youth. She graduated from Indianapolis's Shortridge High School and met Hubbard a short time later, when he was thirty-four years old. Kin nicknamed his wife "Tiny" although she was not small in stature.

Kin and Josephine Hubbard were the parents of two surviving children: a son named Thomas, born in 1907, and a daughter named Virginia, who was born in 1909. Kin Hubbard Jr. was killed in an automobile accident in 1919, when he was little more than a year old; another son died at birth in 1921. In 1909, the Hubbard family moved into a newly built home in Irvington, a suburban neighborhood of Indianapolis, and remained there for twenty years. A larger home for the family on North Meridian Street was completed in the fall of 1929.

Kin Hubbard loved the theater throughout his life and frequently attended theatrical performances and circus performances. In addition, he was an avid home gardener. Hubbard tended to avoid public appearances, preferring instead to live a quiet life, but enjoyed traveling, especially in his later years. Hubbard took a cruise to the Bahamas in 1923 and joined an around-the-world voyage aboard the Samaria in 1924. Kin and Josephine Hubbard also took trips to Miami, Florida, during the winter months.

Death and legacy

Hubbard died from a sudden heart attack at his home on North Meridian Street in Indianapolis, Indiana, on December 26, 1930, at the age of sixty-two.He is best remembered as the humorist who created the Abe Martin cartoon and was described by a fellow News employee as "a genial Dapper Dan with the soul of an imp." During his career with the Indianapolis News, he made more than 8,000 drawings and wrote and illustrated approximately 1,000 essays for the "Short Furrows" column. Hubbard also published Abe Martin-related books on an annual basis. For years after Hubbard's death, the News and other newspapers continued to feature his Abe Martin cartoons. Hubbard's humor continues to entertain readers through his Abe Martin books, as well as Hubbard's longer essays and other works that were published between 1903 and 1930.