[2] Hubbardston, the "Northeast Quarter" of Rutland, was incorporated as a separate district in 1767 and named for Thomas Hubbard (1702–1773), Commissary General of the Province of Massachusetts and Treasurer of Harvard College.

[4] In 1737 Eleazer Brown located on a farm of 60 acres given him by the proprietors of Rutland on the condition that he operate a public house or inn.

After Eleazer's death (reportedly killed by a deer), Mrs. Brown was then the only occupant of town for several years, and she kept the public house for prominent travelers.

It is described by historians as a poor town, sparsely settled and almost wholly agricultural, but having sawmills, potash works, and cottage industries such as the making of palm-leaf hats.

Immigrants from Ireland, French Canada, England, Sweden, and Finland moved to town to work on local farms.

[citation needed] Captain Adam Wheeler, one of the leaders of Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising in central and western Massachusetts, was from Hubbardston.

[7] In 1786, eighty men from the town marched to Worcester under Wheeler's command and, joining hundreds of other farmers, took control of the courthouse to protest the widespread foreclosures and seizures of property by creditors that occurred during the cash-poor 18th century.

Hubbardston is bounded on the northwest by Phillipston and Templeton, on the northeast by Gardner and Westminster, on the southeast by Princeton and Rutland, and on the southwest by Barre.