Alexander Graham Bell Invites the Secretary of the Interior to a Memorial for Gardiner Greene Hubbard, Who Financed Bell’s work on the Telephone, and Then Formed the Bell Telephone Company

An extremely rare letter of Bell as NGS President, the first we’ve had or can recall seeing in almost two decades

When Bell left his post as teacher of the deaf to concentrate on invention, he retained only two students, six-year-old Georgie Sanders, deaf from birth, and 15-year-old Mabel Hubbard. Each pupil would play an important role in Bell’s life. George’s father, Thomas Sanders, a wealthy businessman, offered Bell a place to stay, complete with a room to experiment. The arrangement was for teacher and student to continue their work together, with free room and board thrown in. Mabel was a bright, attractive girl who was ten years Bell’s junior but became the object of his affection. Having lost her hearing after a near-fatal bout of scarlet fever close to her fifth birthday, she had learned to read lips. Her father, Gardiner Greene Hubbard, was Sanders’ business partner and Bell’s personal friend, and he wanted her to work directly with her teacher.

As Bell taught their children, Hubbard and Sanders financed Bell’s experiments in development of an acoustic telegraph, which serendipitously led to his invention of the telephone. Hubbard then organized the Bell Telephone Company (progenitor of AT&T) on July 9, 1877, with himself as president, Sanders as treasurer and Bell as ‘Chief Electrician’. Two days later, Hubbard became Bell’s father-in-law when his daughter Mabel married Bell on July 11, 1877.

Hubbard was also interested in the public side of science. In 1888 he became was one of the founders and first president of the National Geographic Society (NGS), serving in that capacity from 1888-1897. He guided the NGS towards promoting its interests in geography, archeology, natural science, photography, promotion of environmental and historical conservation, and the study of world culture and history. Today, the organization’s Hubbard Medal is given for distinction in exploration, discovery, and research. Hubbard died on December 11, 1897, and on January 7, 1898 Bell took over as NGS president.

The National Geographic Society wanted to honor Hubbard, and Bell, as his business partner, son-in-law, and successor at NGS was the ideal person to organize an event and handle the invitation list. One of those to be included was the man most responsible for environmental conservation in the United States as steward of the nation’s national parks – the Secretary of the Interior, Cornelius Bliss. Printed letter signed, Washington, mid-January 1898, just two weeks after Bell succeeded Hubbard as NGS president, to Bliss. “You are respectfully invited to be present at a memorial meeting in honor of the late Gardiner Greene Hubbard to be held under the auspices of the National Geographic Society at the Congregational Church, G and Tenth Streets, on Friday evening January 21st [1898], at 8 o’clock.” This is the only letter of Bell as NGS president that we have ever had or can recall seeing. Moreover, a search of public sale records going as far back as 1980 discloses only one such letter having come up, and that was 17 years ago.

The event was held and widely reported in the press. We obtained this letter from the descendants of Interior Secretary Bliss, and it has never before been offered for sale.