Lester Andrews Hubbard was born on 8 May 1892 in Willard, Box Elder County, Utah, to Joseph and Salley Ann Hubbard. He married Barbara Larsen in 1919. Hubbard was a veteran of World War I, attended Sorbonne University in Paris, and received his bachelor's degree from the University of Utah in 1920. He received his master's degree from the University of Chicago in 1925 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Hubbard was a faculty member at the University of Utah for thirty-two years.

While teaching at the University of Utah, Dr. Hubbard collaborated with Dr. Guy Montgomery of the University of California in the preparation of A Concordance to the Poetical Works of John Dryden. In 1946 he began the Hubbard collection of folklore, consisting largely of folksongs, folktales, and local narratives which provide source materials for the sociologist as well as the floklorist interested in the culture and the religious history of the people of Utah.

Biography taken from the Ballads and Songs from Utah book.