Clark County Ohio Biographies

WILLIAM BABBITT QUINN, M.D., is one of the younger members of the medical profession at Springfield. His success has been due to careful training, personal qualifications for his chosen vocation, and an unusually wide practical experience.

Doctor Quinn was born at Newport, Kentucky, February 17, 1892, son of Robert A. and Janet D. (Douglas) Quinn. His father was a native of Cincinnati, and ran away early in the Civil war to enlist in the Seventeenth Ohio Infantry. He was in service until the close of hostilities, and for many years afterward was advertising man for the Williams Directory Company. He continued in that work until his death on February 24, 1892.

Mrs. Janet D. Quinn after the death of her husband, and with two small children to care for, took up the study of medicine in the Cincinnati Eclectic Medical Institute, and graduated in 1895. She made a wonderful success of her profession, was one of the pioneer women to take up medicine as a career, and she enjoyed an extensive practice at Newport for twenty-six years. Since then she has lived retired at Los Angeles. Her two sons are William B., and Robert Douglas. The latter was born in April, 1889, and is now an electrical engineer at Binghamton, New York.

William Babbitt Quinn was just a week old when his father died, and he was reared and carefully trained by his mother at Newport, where he attended grammar and high school. In 1913 he graduated from the Cincinnati Eclectic Medical College, and following that had seven months of hospital training at Cincinnati, for a similar time was connected with the Springfield Hospital, and later was interne and assistant to the superintendent of the Metropolitan Department of Public Charity at Blackwell’s Island, New York. Doctor Quinn practiced medicine at Hollywood, California, for a year and a half, after which he returned to Springfield, and for four years was a member of the obstetrical staff at the Springfield City Hospital. His offices are in the Fairbanks Building. He is a member of the Ohio State and National Eclectic Association and also the Clark County and Ohio State Medical societies. Doctor Quinn is a member of the Episcopal Church.

In June, 1917, he married Miss Elvira Voorhees, a native of Richmond, Indiana, and daughter of Samuel T. and Ora (Calloway) Voorhees. They have two children, Ora Janet, born in April, 1918, and William Monroe, born in December, 1919.

Source: A Standard History of Springfield and Clark County, Ohio by Benjamin F. Prince, 1922, page 362