Charles Eustis Hubbard

Charles Eustis Hubbard (1842–1928) is remembered for The Campaign of the Forty-fifth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, published in Boston in 1882. The book grew out of a firsthand account written after the regiment returned from service, and its preface makes clear that it was created to preserve the experiences and friendships of Company A of the Forty-Fifth Massachusetts.

That firsthand quality is part of what makes Hubbard interesting as an author. A later regimental history identifies him as Corporal Charles Eustis Hubbard and notes that his diary became the basis for the 1882 volume, which was illustrated by fellow veteran and Boston artist Frank H. Shapleigh. The result is less a distant military study than a personal, readable record of camp life, travel, and memory.

Hubbard also appears in records tied to the early Bell telephone enterprise. The Library of Congress lists 1888 stockholder circulars from Charles E. Hubbard in the papers of the American Bell Telephone Company, and other historical references connect him with the Bell Telephone Company as an early secretary and clerk. Even with the surviving biographical detail fairly sparse, the record that remains shows a man whose life touched both Civil War remembrance and the beginnings of modern communications.