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BRIEF SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND WORK OF HENRY 
HOMES BABCOCK. 
No Flora of Chicago and vicinity could now be written that would adequately 
represent both what this flora once was and what it now is, that did not employ 
the valuable results of the labors of earlier botanists engaged in this same field. 
For, owing to the concentration here of a great population, vast changes have 
been wrought in recent years in the flora of this locality. Many species which 
were once abundant have become rare or have disappeared altogether, while 
many new ones have been introduced from adjacent localities or from abroad. 
Among the earlier local botanists, there were none whose contributions to the 
knowledge of our flora were comparable to those of the late Professor H. H. Bab- 
cock, whose “Catalogue of the Plants of Chicago” constitutes the basis of this 
Flora. It seems appropriate, therefore, and just to the memory of an able bota- 
nist, that this work should include at least a brief sketch of his life and services 
to botanical science. 
Henry Homes Babcock was born of New England parentage, in Thetford, 
Vermont, December 19, 1832. Both of his parents were educated people, his 
father being a Congregational clergyman and a graduate of Amherst College, and 
his mother a graduate of Bradford Academy, when that school was under the di- 
rectorship of Hon. Benjamin Greenleaf, of mathematical fame. From both, 
therefore, he inherited scholarly tastes and aptitudes, and from early childhood 
he breathed an atmosphere of culture and refinement. We need not be surprised 
that he early manifested a preference for scholarly pursuits or that he was fully 
prepared for college while yet much too young to enter. His surroundings at 
this early period of his life seem also to have been particularly fitted to awaken in 
the mind of so thoughtful a youth a love of natural history pursuits. The par- 
sonage woods at Thetford, abounding as they did with interesting plants and ani- 
mals, were a constant pleasure to him and as much a source of instruction as his 
books. It was here that he acquired the mental bias which determined him to 
the career of a naturalist, a fact which he himself in after life gratefully recog- 
nized. 
He was the eldest of five children, and when, at the age of sixteen, his father 
died and his mother was left with but limited means, the burden of the support 
of the family partly devolved upon him and interfered with his cherished hope of 
completing a full course at college. Nevertheless, by close economy and by em- 
ploying his vacations in teaching, he was enabled to spend two profitable years at 
Dartmouth College. At the end of this time, at the age of nineteen, he was 
obliged to lay aside his college studies for good, and accepted a teacher’s position 
in the public schools at Dedham, Mass. Here his work was so acceptable that at 
the end of eighteen months he was invited to become the master of the Grammar 
School in Newton, a position which he accepted and filled to the utmost satisfac- 
tion for a period of six years. The reputation which he there acquired as a kind 
and judicious disciplinarian and an accurate and thorough teacher procured him 
an invitation to the principalship of the High School in Somerville, Mass. Here 
he taught with the highest success for eight years, resigning his position in 1867 
to come to Chicago. The fullness of his knowledge, together with his rare ability 
to impart it, his unostentatious dignity, kindness of heart and graciousness of 
manner, soon won him the respect and confidence of this community, and made 
the Chicago Academy, which he founded in 1867 and conducted until the close of 
