Samuel T. Hubbard Jr.

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Samuel Thomas Hubbard Jr. (1884–1962) was a cotton industry executive and a World War I military intelligence officer with the American Expeditionary Forces. In France, he led the Enemy Order of Battle section in G2, acted as a liaison to General John Pershing’s Allied headquarters, and headed the military intelligence school in Langres. For his service, the U.S. Army awarded him the Distinguished Service Medal and France gave him the Officier d’Académie.

After the war, Hubbard returned to the cotton business, working with Hubbard Brothers & Company. He later helped lead the New York Cotton Exchange, serving as vice president and then president. He was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, to Samuel T. Hubbard and Elizabeth Van Winkle Hubbard; his father also once led the New York Cotton Exchange.

Education and early career: Hubbard finished Morristown School in 1903 and earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1907. He joined the New York Army National Guard in 1911 and, at the start of World War I, entered the Signal Officers Reserve Corps. In 1917 Pershing appointed him chief of the Order of Battle Section in G2, and in 1918 he was promoted to major and served as a liaison officer. He spent time with the Army of Occupation in Coblenz after the war and later gave talks on military intelligence.

Author and public service: He wrote Memoirs of a Staff Officer: 1917–1919 (1959), which has influenced studies of American military intelligence. Before the war, he worked for W. A. Short & Company in Arkansas in the cotton business and then joined his family’s company, rising to leadership roles in Fall River and New York City. After Hubbard Brothers & Company liquidated in 1928, he joined Goodbody & Co. as a cotton and commodity partner for 28 years. He also served on the Chicago Board of Trade and testified before Congress about cotton prices in 1926, 1928, and 1936, advocating SEC regulation of the market.

Personal life: He married Margaret Bassett in 1912, and they had five children: Harriet, Mary, Samuel III, Thomas Bassett, and William Hustace Hubbard II.