Flanders of three hundred
years ago, through Michael Paulus Van Der Voort, who came to
America from Dendermonde, East Flanders, and whose marriage on 18th
November, 1640, to Marie Rappelyea, was the fifth recorded marriage
in New Amsterdam, now New York. A branch runs back in England to
John Rogers the martyr. It is the boast of this family that none
of the blood has ever been known to "show the white feather."
Among those ancestors of recent date of whose deeds he was
specially proud, were the great-grandfather, Samuel Rogers, a
pioneer preacher of the Church of Christ among the early settlers
of Kentucky and Missouri, and the Grandfather Hubbard who took his
part in the Indian fights of Ohio's early history. On both
mother's and father's side is a record of brave, high-hearted,
clean-living men and women, strong in Christian faith, lovers of
nature, all of them, and thus partakers in rich measure of that
which ennobles life.
The father, Leonidas Hubbard, had come "'cross country" from
Deerfield, Ohio, with gun on shoulder, when Michigan was still a
wilderness, and had chosen this site for his future home. He had
taught in a school for a time in his young manhood; but the call of
the out-of-doors was too strong, and forth he went again. When the
responsibilities of life made it necessary for him to limit his
wanderings he had halted here; and here on July 12th, 1872, the son
Leonidas Hubbard, Jr., was born.
He began by taking things very much to heart, joys and sorrows
alike. In his play he was always setting himself some
unaccomplishable task, and then flying into a rage because he could
not do it. The first great trouble came with the advent of a baby
sister who, some foolish one told him, would steal from him his
mother's heart. Passionately he implored a big cousin to "take
that little baby out and chop its head off."
Later he found it all a mistake, that his mother's heart was still
his own, and so he was reconciled.
From earliest recollection he had listened with wide eyes through
winter evenings, while over a pan of baldwin apples his father
talked with some neighbour who had dropped in, of the early days
when they had hunted deer and wolves and wild turkeys over this
country where were now the thrifty Michigan farms. There were,
too, his father's stories of his own adventures as hunter and miner
in the mountains of the West.
It seemed to him the time would never come when he would be big
enough to hunt and trap and travel through the forests as his
father had done. He grew so slowly; but the years did pass, and at
last one day the boy almost died of gladness when his father told
him he was big enough now to learn to trap, and that he should have
a lesson tomorrow. It was the first great overwhelming joy.
There was also a first great crime.
While waiting for this happy time to come he had learned to do
other things, among them to throw stones. It was necessary,
however, to be careful what was aimed at. The birds made tempting
marks; but song-birds were sacred things, and temptation had to be
resisted.
One day while he played in the yard with his little sister,
resentment having turned to devotion, a wren flew down to the wood
pile and began its song. It happened at that very moment he had a
stone in his hand. He didn't quite have time to think before the
stone was gone and the bird dropped dead. Dumb with horror the two
gazed at each other. Beyond doubt all he could now expect was to
go straight to torment. After one long look they turned and walked
silently away in opposite directions. Never afterwards did they
mention the incident to each other.
A new life began for him with his trapping. He learned to fish as
well, for besides being a hunter, his father was an angler of
State-wide reputation. The days on which his father accompanied
him along the banks of the St. Joe, or to some more distant stream,
were very specially happy ones. His cup was quite filled full
when, on the day he was twelve years old, a rifle all his own was
placed in his hands. Father and son then hunted together.
While thus growing intimate with the living things of the woods and
streams, his question was not so much "What?" as "Why?" As reading
came to take a larger part in life and interest to reach out to
human beings, again his question was "Why?" So when other heroes
took their places beside his father for their share of homage, they
were loved and honoured for that which prompted their achievements
more than for the deeds themselves.
Passionately fond of history, with its natural accompaniment
geography, he revelled, as does every normal boy, in stories of the
wars, Indian stories and tales of travel and adventure. His
imagination kindled by what he had read, and the oft-repeated tales
of frontier life in which the courage, endurance, and high honour
of his own pioneer forefathers stood out strong and clear, it was
but natural that the boy under the apple trees should feel romance
in every bit of forest, every stream; that his thoughts should be
reaching towards the out-of-the-way places of the earth where life
was still that of the pioneer with the untamed wilderness lying
across his path, and on into the wilderness itself.
Though born with all the instincts of the hunter, he was born also
with an exquisitely tender and sympathetic nature, which made him
do strange things for a boy.
