Hubbell Pioneers - New Jersey
The First College Graduate
Nathaniel Hubbell
Nathaniel Hubbell was a man of uncommon ability who was destined to be the arch-representative of a large family in a large growing new world. To some, he fell far short of his destined appointment in this world. For others, he was probably thought of as the bearer of a spirit which eventually ruptures the bonds of bigotry and intolerance. All this suggests that he was a nonconformist.
Nathaniel Hubbell was the grandson of the first Hubbell in North America, Richard, and the son of Richard’s son Richard. He was born in 1702 and graduated from Yale in 1723 and was probably the first member of the family to graduate from college.
He and his wife Esther appeared before the New Haven (Connecticut) Court in April 1722 regarding a charge of fornication. In 1725 he was admitted into full communion in the Congregational Church of Fairfield.
However, Nathaniel did not pursue his calling as a Congregational minister in Connecticut, for which Yale prepared its graduates. Rather, he want to Pennsylvania where he was ordained by the Presbytery of Philadelphia in 1727. It is assumed that his earlier escapade in New Haven contributed to his leaving Connecticut.
His name appears on the roll of the (Philadelphia) Synod for 1727 and was attached to a protest in which he declined the jurisdiction of the Synod. Also in 1727, he associated with the Whippany Presbyterian Church in Hanover, New Jersey, where he served until 1730. At the same time, he appears to have been ministering to a fledgling church in Westfield of which he was the first minister. He served that church from 1727 to 1745. During that time he is recorded in a list of residents of Elizabethtown, N.J. (the suffix -- town -- was dropped in later years).
The story of his break with the Westfield church is a sad one, caused most certainly by his unreasonable attitude in disposing of sizeable acreage of parsonage land he claimed had been given him by the church fathers. That this land was his to use just during the period of his incumbency seems obvious. There is little to support his position that he had a right to sell the land for his own gain, as he seems to have done, if for no other reason than that the church would be faced with the need to buy new land for his successor. Nathaniel was obliged to resign from the Westfield church in 1745. It is not clear that he received another pulpit assignment.
In 1752 his name (or that of his son Nathaniel Jr.) appears in a list of persons in Piscataway, Middlesex County, N.J. Sugsequent references in records to Nathaniel Hubbell are also imprecise as to whether father or son is meant: in 1751 "Hubbell’s Mill" is located on the east side of the Rahaway River; in 1753 much land, various houses and barns situate in Rahaway were advertised for sale. The final and melancholy recorded note in his troubled life is the reference Nathaniel Hubbell makes in his will dated 1760 to "my disobedient and absconded wife, Elizabeth" (a second wife). The distribution of his assets to his three sons and five daughters living at the time the will was drawn up are spelled out in Hubbell Pioneers.
He moved to Lebanon in Hunterdon County where he died. That Nathaniel Hubbell was a respected person, held in esteem at least by some of the community, seems proven by frequent references in New Jersey records to his being called to witness wills of parishioners and others, and his appointment as executor of estates of several persons.
It is particularly difficult to identify and place with confidence the Hubbells living in New Jersy at about this time and later, due in large measure to the destruction of the New Jersey census records of 1790, 1800, and 1810 in the burning of records offices in Washington by the British in 1812. Genealogists have reconstructed large portions of residents’ list from other sources; however, more work remains to be done to identify accurately the spouses of his children and their issue.