Her first published work was a poem that appeared in St. Nicholas Magazine in 1911 or 1912, for which she received a silver medal.
It starts with the line "Midnight in May ..."
Her two stories set in Nevada ("White Justice" and "Two for One") were both written about the same time (about 1933), although one
of them did not appear in print for several years.
Her two articles published in the Smithsonian for Victoria Woodhull and Belva Lockwood were originally a single article that
showed the contracts between the two women. She may have the original in her files.
Her "children" include Bill ... and Mary ... from the adoption agency. Bill joined the army during WW II and Mary got married and
moved to Florida. They were not with her when her "Spanish children" came to her. Paul West, Jr. lived with her during the war,
when his father was in the army. (He is not alive.) Erin and Tim Healey are step children from her marriage to Charles P. Healey.
Julia said that Erin didn't get along with her mother, but that she never prevented the two of them from seeing one another.
When they sold their house in Bedford Village, NY, after husband Paul when into the army in 1942, she moved back to her house in
New York City on East 86th St.
Farmerettes during 1917. During the war there were few men available to do the farming. Julia's Uncle John Yates McDonald had
four degrees. Marshall McDonald had run the farm until he went into the war. John had been an agricultural agent in Preston
county. Women who were getting degrees in agriculture from the University of Wisconsin were brought to the farm that summer to
learn farming. John Y. McDonald's wife Dorothy was one of those farmerettes. Julia, who also worked with them, can remember the
girls working all day in the field and having John say that two men could have done a better job.
Julia was set on a horse as soon as she could walk. At Media it was an old horse wirh her grandfather's cavalry saddle. At
Clarksburg it was a nasty little shetland pony who threw her more than once.
The fat man in her trilogy who sees himself as a real beau was based on Julia's cousin John Aglionby, who weighed about 300
pounds. He was a glutton, who would grab a whole pan full of biscuits with one hand. He would bring flowers to the house to
romance a young lady, the family would put him up for the night, and he and the flowers would be gone the next morning, on to
another family and young woman.
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Cousin Nettie Aglionby was equally obnoxious. She would arrive unannounced at Media and stay for a month.
The movie depicting the supreme court trail and Julia is called "Separate But Equal". Julia says it showed her twenty years younger.
She said her father had absolutely no influence on her writing. He never edited or commented, or even read Julia's works before they
were published.
She had to go to Canada with her Spanish children Nina and Ramon to have them readmitted to the U.S. as citizens. It was during
the McCarthy era, and they were the children of a writer who had fought on the communist side in the Spanish Civil war. After the
mother was killed and the war lost, he brought them to the U.S. and went to Mexico to try to start his writing career again. He rarely
visited or wrote to them and sent Julia only $100 for their support, which he later borrowed back. He always told the children that
they couldn't come to live with him because he was building a big house for them. Ramon, who was very perceptive, finally told
Julia that the house his father was building must be as big as a cathedral.
When she took the children to Canada, she was interviewed by a civilian and military board, the worst of which was an FBI
representative. They asked her why she wanted to keep the children of a communist and she said "Because I love them. And for that
I cannot provide documentation."
Ramon later asked her why they were all against her when she went in and all for her when she walked out.
Julia had first learned about them from a friend who had been a newspaperman in Spain.
She said that children can forgive parents who are drunk or have other faults. They cannot forgive parents who push them away and
ignore them.
Her husband Paul West, when he worked for Time and Life, was first an adman and later became assistant to the assistant to Henry
Luce.
Her husband Charles Healey suffered from manic depression, which they treated. He died a painful death from cancer. Julia said
that they wouldn't let him die and that the experience was so horrible that she refused to marry again for 16 years.
Julia says she did become much closer to her father after Nell's death, although they were both independent adults by them with their
own jobs.
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Nell did not support Julia in getting her first divorce.
When she remarried William Adams, she went to live at his house in New York. She said that the place was not really very
comfortable. She did not move back to Jefferson County until 1986.
She said that the episode of the rape of Laura Knode was the subject of a book by John Bishop called Dark Vengeance. Julia said
that the characters did not greatly resemble the originals and that the book made him a very unpopular person in this area. [The book
is not based on the rape of Laura Knode, who was attacked by a black vagrant.]
The book published by Julia Davis' Spanish son, Ramon Sender y Barrara, is called Death in Zomorra, from theUniversity of New
Mexico Press, published about 2 years ago.
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