[1] He moved to the small town of Hesper (located about two and a half miles southeast of Eudora) with his family in 1869 and was educated in the Douglas County public school system.

[4][5] After submitting a bid to the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Company to build a railroad connecting St. Louis to Kansas City, Stubbs profited around $250,000.

[1][4][5] During his middle-age, Stubbs decided to enter into politics, and in 1902, he secured a spot in the Kansas House of Representatives, serving the district in which Douglas County was situated.

"[1] That said, the historian Robert Sherman La Forte has argued that while Stubbs' tended to eschew patronage, his "choice of men to manage the administration's programs ... was poor", which alienated many veteran members of the state legislature.

Specifically, he focused his attention on Crawford County, Kansas (then nicknamed the "Little Balkans"), where many individuals were making bootleg whiskey to supplement their meager incomes as strip miners.