Cartoonist. Best known for the single-panel comic strip "Abe Martin", which ran from 1904 to 1937, and primarily associated with the Indianapolis News. Born in Bellefontaine, Ohio, Frank McKinney Hubbard better known as Kin, was the youngest member of a family that included five older brothers and sisters. Named after his father's friend, an Ohio politician, he was part of a strange family. In these interesting surroundings, Kin displayed an artistic flair at an early age. In an autobiographical sketch he provided the News a few years before his death, Kin said that from the time he was old enough to hold a pair of scissors, he could "cut from blank paper any kind of an animal with a correctness and deftness that was almost creepy." This artistic talent, however, did not translate into classroom success, as he dropped out of school before the seventh grade and took a job in a paint shop. His father couldn't be too upset at his youngest child, as he seemed to miss Kin's presence during the day. He once complained to a teacher who made his son stay after school that if his son "doesn't get his lessons, it's because you don't know how to teach. Besides, the boy's needed for errands at home." Kin's love for the theater, however, paid off in a way that set the course for his future career. After witnessing a local performance of the Grand Bellefontaine Operatic Minstrels and Professor Tom Wright's Operatic Solo Orchestra, he wrote to a friend in Indianapolis about the show, and in decorative detail remarked with some drawings. Impressed with Kin's artwork, the friend showed the drawings to John H. Holliday, Indianapolis News owner and editor. Kin was hired in 1891, and remained at the News for three years. During that time he produced a number of works for the newspaper, but was always handicapped by not knowing how to draw. He could make crude sketches that were readily recognized, but Kin knew nothing of composition, light and shade, and perspective. His time at the News, however, would be short. Called upon to draw for the newspaper pictures of the intricately-restored interiors for a number of city banks, Kin threw up his hands and departed Indianapolis. Kin kept busy by again visiting the South, driving a mule team in Chattanooga, serving as a gatekeeper for a Cincinnati amusement park, and working as an artist for the Cincinnati Tribune and Mansfield [Ohio] News. In 1899, the 31-year-old received a letter from the Indianapolis Sun inviting him to work for the newspaper. He accepted the offer, and during the two years he worked at the Sun really made more progress as an artist than he believed he had in all the years before. Kin rejoined the News as an artist in the fall of 1901. On December 17, 1904, the Abe Martin character made his first appearance. The drawing showed a smiling, whiskered gentleman staring at a playbill featuring a scantily-clad (for those days) woman. At the drawing's bottom, the character commented: "If I thought that blamed troupe done everything it has pictures fer, I'd stay over this evening and go home on the interubin." On February 3, 1905, Kin moved Abe Martin to Brown County, where he would remain for the rest of his career. The artist described the area as "a rugged, almost mountainous, wooded section of Indiana without telegraphic or railroad connections – a county whose natives for the most part subsist by blackberrying, sassafras-mining and basket making." Finding that sometimes he had things to say that Abe Martin would be unlikely to utter, Kin added to his cast with such delightful country neighbors as spinster Miss Fawn Lippincut; senior citizen Uncle Niles Turner; teacher Professor Alexander Tansey; editor and publisher of the Bloom Center Weekly Sliphorn the Hon. Ex-Editor Cale Fluhart; businessman Tell Binkley; and many others. In naming his characters, Kin sometimes used the names of people he knew in Bellefontaine. He also found that another good source was Kentucky jury lists. An immediate hit with News readers, Abe Martin found an expanded audience in 1905 when Kin himself, just in time for the Christmas season, released a book featuring Abe and his humorous remarks – a publishing tradition that continued for years to come. Along with Abe Martin's remarks, the first collection included an introduction by Meredith Nicholson and a poetic tribute to the character from the Hoosier Poet himself, James Whitcomb Riley, who immediately recognized that the Ohio native had in his hands a potential gold mine. Kin's career received an additional boost in 1910, again thanks to a Hoosier author. In May of that year, an article about the Abe Martin feature appeared in American magazine. Although he had repeated job offers from other newspapers, Kin remained at the News, loyally. He worked there until his death at age 62.