John Milton Hubbard

John Milton Hubbard is best known as the author of Notes of a Private, a memoir first published in 1913. The book presents his recollections as a private soldier in General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s cavalry, and it has continued to be collected and reprinted for readers of Civil War history.

Available library and bookseller records identify him primarily through that memoir, while the National Park Service also preserves a portrait of him. Because readily available biographical details are limited, the clearest picture that emerges is of a veteran whose lasting reputation rests on turning lived experience into a direct, personal war narrative.

For listeners who enjoy memoirs that bring history close to the ground, Hubbard’s writing offers the perspective of someone who recorded not just events, but the texture of ordinary soldiering as he remembered it years later.