Mabel Gardiner Hubbard

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Mabel Gardiner Hubbard with her husband Alexander Graham Bell and their daughters Elsie (left) and Marian, around 1885.
Camera-photo.svg Wikimedia Commons has more pictures of: Mabel and her family

Mabel Gardiner Hubbard (November 25, 1857 – January 3, 1923), was the daughter of Boston lawyer Gardiner Hubbard, and the wife of Alexander Graham Bell. [1]

Contents

[edit] Biography

She was born on November 25, 1857 in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Gardiner Greene Hubbard and Gertrude Mercer McCurdy. [2]

She contracted scarlet fever in 1861 or 1862, and was left deaf. She became one of Alexander Graham Bell's pupils, and they later married (on July 11, 1877) when she was 19.

They had four children: Elsie May Bell (1878-1964) who married Gilbert Grosvenor of National Geographic; [3] [4] Marian Hubbard Bell (1880-1962) who was referred to as "Daisy" ;[5] Edward Bell (1881); and Robert Bell (1883).

She was the inspiration for her father's involvement in the founding of the first oral school for the deaf in the United States, Clarke School for the Deaf.

[edit] Deaf to Bell's utterances

Mabel was also the indirect source of her husband's early commercial success after his creation of the telephone. The U.S. Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876 made Bell's newly invented telephone a featured headline worldwide. The Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II and the eminent British physicist William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) recommended his device to the Committee of Electrical Awards, which voted Bell the Gold Medal for Electrical Equipment. Bell also won a second Gold Medal for Visible Speech, for his additional display at the exposition. Ironically, Bell hadn't even planned on exhibiting at the fair due to his heavy teaching schedule, and only went there at the stern insistence of Mabel, his then-fiancée and future wife[6]

Mabel had understood Bell's reluctance to go to the exhibition, so she had secretly bought his train ticket, packed his bag, and then took the unknowing Bell to the train station where she told her shocked fiancé that he was going on a trip. When Bell started arguing with her, Mabel turned her sight away from him thus becoming literally deaf to his protests.[7][6]

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Mrs. A.G. Bell Dies. Inspired Telephone. Deaf Girl's Romance With Distinguished Inventor Was Due to Her Affliction.". New York Times. January 4, 1923, Thursday. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:HubbardBell.gif. Retrieved 2007-07-21. "Mrs. Mabel Hubbard Bell, widow of Alexander Graham Bell ... Mrs. Bell was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 25, 1859 [sic], the daughter of Gardiner Green Hubbard [sic] ..." 
  2. ^ Her New York Times obituary lists her birth as November 25, 1859. Robert Bruce's and Charlotte Gray's biographies both give Mabel's birth year as 1857.
  3. ^ "Dr. Gilbert H. Grosvenor Dies; Head of National Geographic, 90; Editor of Magazine 55 Years Introduced Photos, Increased Circulation to 4.5 Million". New York Times. February 5, 1966, Saturday. "Baddeck, Nova Scotia, 4 February 1964 (Canadian Press) Dr. Gilbert H. Grosvenor, chairman of the board and former president of the National Geographic Society and editor of the National Geographic magazine from 1899 to 1954, died on the Cape Breton Island estate once owned by his father-in-law, the inventor Alexander Graham Bell. He was 90 years old." 
  4. ^ "Mrs. Gilbert Grosvenor Dead; Joined in Geographic's Treks; Married Professor's Son". New York Times. 27 December 1964, Sunday. "Washington, DC, 26 December 1964. Mrs. Elsie May Bell Grosvenor, wife of Dr. Gilbert Grosvenor, chairman of the board of the National Geographic Society, died this evening at her home in Bethesda, Maryland. She was 86 years old. Death was attributed to heart disease and old age." 
  5. ^ "Mrs. David Fairchild, 82, Dead; Daughter of Bell, Phone Inventor". New York Times. 25 September 1962, Tuesday. "Baddeck, Nova Scotia, September 24, 1962 (Canadian Press) Mrs. Marian Bell Fairchild of Miami, widow of David Fairchild, noted plant explorer, and daughter of the telephone pioneer Alexander Graham Bell, died tonight at her summer home. She was 82 years old." 
  6. ^ a b Gray, Charlotte (2006) Reluctant Genius: The Passionate Life and Inventive Mind of Alexander Graham Bell, HarperCollins, Toronto, 2006, ISBN 0002006766, ISBN 9780002006767
  7. ^ De Land, Fred (1906) Notes on the Development of the Telephone, Popular Science, November 1906, pp.427-438;

[edit] Further reading

  • Gray, Charlotte. Reluctant Genius: Alexander Graham Bell and the Passion for Invention. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2006. ISBN 1-55970-809-3.



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