(Daniel-Isaac-Elkanah-Elkanah-Edward)
Copy of Portfolio, dated Oct., 1874, of the New England Society of Orange to
Daniel Babbitt:
Daniel Babbitt, M. D., son of Daniel and Sarah (Beach) Babbitt, was born in Mendham,
Morris Co., N. J., August 3, 1788, and came to Orange about the year 1810. At that time,
as he informed Dr. Wm. Pierson, Jr., in his last sickness, there was not a shade tree in
the town; and, incredible as this may now seem, it is probably the literal truth. Moved by
this deficiency, he procured from Mendham (about 1814) some buttonwoods, which he set out
himself in front of his residence on the West corner of Essex and Main Streets, in front
of and around the First Presbyterian Church, and elsewhere, and gave away to whosoever
would plant them. To this public-spirited act must be traced the practice of setting out
shade-trees which has made the streets of Orange such an ornament of the place; and in
dedicating to him its first Portfolio of tree-photographs the New England Society is only
paying him an honor to which he is clearly entitled. Dr. Babbitt was a graduate of
Princeton, and practised medicine in Orange for about thirty years. In 1811 he delivered,
in the First Presbyterian Church, a Fourth of July oration, which was printed in 1861 in
the Orange journal. In 1823 he was one of the trustees of Orange Academy (Hoyt's History
of the First Church, p. 189). He was also one of the original stockholders and for many
years a director of the Morris and Essex R. R., president of the Orange Bank until near
the close of his life, and vestryman and senior warden of St. Mark's parish. He died May
16,1864. A member of Union Lodge, F. & A. M. Had served as grand master of the Grand
Lodge of New Jersey.
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