One summer day in 1902, a “lady missionary” from Southern Utah serving in the Northern States Mission was invited to attend the birthday party of an elderly woman, some 97 years old (our missionary was herself about 70). Here is a picture of the birthday girl a few years later (yes, “a few years later” – the woman lived to be past 103 years old).

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When our missionary sister introduced herself as coming from Utah, the older woman immediately began talking about Mormons.

She told me she lived in Kirtland when the Mormons were there. She said she knew Joseph Smith, and had been present when he had revelation. She spoke very disrespectfully of him as ‘Joe Smith.’ She said she didn’t think much of Joe, but his Mother was a nice old lady.

She claimed to be acquainted with all the Smith family, with Sidney Rigdon, Robinson, William Marks, Brigham Young, the Whitmers, O. Cowdery & many others, and was related to Rigdon, Marks, & Robinson by marriage in some way. …

I believed she must have been a member of the Church at that time. But I was not able to get anything more, but I was quite satisfied she was an Apostate, and a bitter one.

That’s interesting enough, I guess … but the really interesting detail was the woman’s name: Mrs. Hubbell.

That’s a name that rings bells, even for someone like me who doesn’t do a lot of work in Kirtland era history. The Joseph Smith Papers website gives this information in the historical introduction to 1831’s Section 43:

In this atmosphere of religious excess came a specific challenge to JS’s authority. In February 1831, the same month that JS and other members arrived from New York, a woman referred to as Mrs. “Hubble”claimed to receive revelations, which she shared publicly with other members. As John Whitmer explained in his later history: “About these days there was a woman by the name of Hubble who professed to be a prophetess of the Lord, and professed to have many revelations, and knew that the Book of mormon was true; and that she should become a teacher in the Church of Christ. She appeard very sanctimonious and deceived some, who were not able to detect her in her hypocracy.”

This “woman by the name of Hubble” has never been satisfactorily identified. As a note on the same JSP page says, “This was possibly Laura Fuller Hubbell, older sister of Edson Fuller, who had joined the church and been ordained an elder, but the woman was more likely ‘Mrs. Louisa Hubbell,’ who had converted from the Disciples of Christ and later rejoined the Disciples in May 1831.”

I don’t know whether our birthday girl of the Northern States Mission has ever been considered as a candidate for the “woman by the name of Hubble,” but looking into the possibility was irresistible. Spoiler: I cannot say conclusively that she is or is not; this is what I did find:

Parmilla Robinson was born26 July 1805 in Rutland County, Vermont. Her family was still living in Vermont in 1820, but by 1824 Parmilla and perhaps others of her family had moved to Livingston County, New York, about 70 miles southwest of Palmyra. There she married Lanson Hubbell and began to raise what became a numerous family. If the available birth information on her children is accurate, Parmilla was still living in New York in 1831 (I haven’t yet found the family on the 1830 census), which runs against the proposition that she was in Kirtland when Joseph Smith arrived to find Ms. Hubble, prophetess, there.

But it doesn’t necessarily rule Parmilla out entirely: She does seem to have been in Kirtland at the time the Mormons were there, and she has definite Mormon connections, whether or not she herself was ever a member. Her brother George Washington Hubbell married Athalia, daughter of Sidney Rigdon, in Kirtland; although George later left the Church, he was a significant person in Kirtland, a clerk and recorder for the high council there, and he replaced Oliver Cowdery as church recorder. George may not have been at Kirtland as early as 1831, however.

Parmilla was also the sister of Rosannah Robinson Marks, wife of William Marks. Marks was also associated with the high council in Kirtland, and he appears in the Doctrine and Covenants. Like others in his family, he left the Church eventually. He and Rosannah may not have been at Kirtland as early as 1831, either.

Parmilla and Lonson Hubbell were in Sheffield, Ashtabula County, Ohio – about 45 miles from Kirtland – by at least 1836, at the same time as her brother and sister were in Kirtland.

Other than the statement in the missionary’s letter that Parmilla Robinson Hubbell had been at Kirtland – and notice how accurate that letter is in recording Parmilla’s connection to the surnames Robinson, Marks, and Rigdon – I have not been able to place Parmilla directly in Kirtland. She may never have actually lived there; that historians have not been able to identify definitely the “woman by the name of Hubble” may mean that the Hubbell family were never established residents of Kirtland to leave their names in land or court or vital records. With all the movement between western New York and the new settlements in Ohio, by Mormons and others, during those early years, it is certainly possible, at least, for Parmilla to have been there either as a short-term resident or merely as a visitor, during the critical time.

As I’ve said, this time and place are not my area of study. But I throw out Parmilla Robinson Hubbell as a possible candidate for the “woman by the name of Hubble” whose excess was at least partially responsible for a significant revelation on order within the Church.

(And now I brace to hear that this is all familiar stuff to those who do know this time and place, and that Parmilla has already been considered and discarded …)

Any takers for further research?