Julia Burnelle (Bernie) Smade Babcock was an Arkansas literary author, historian, and naturalist, among many accomplishments. Her papers are housed with the UALR Center for Arkansas History and Culture, The Bernie Babcock Collection, 1855-1996, UALR.MS.0092.
Babcock was born in Union, Ohio, on April 28, 1868, the first of six children, to Hiram and Charlotte Smade. The Smades raised their children with a freedom uncharacteristic for that time. At the age of three, Babcock told a teacher that a horse pulled his lip back and bit her head off, while on the way to school. When the teacher complained to Bernie’s parents about this lie, the mother defended Babcock’s imagination by stating that it was a sign she would become a writer.
She did just that when she became an adult. Determined to make a living for herself and her five children after the death of her husband, William, Babcock published many significant literary and historical works, including The Soul of Ann Rutledge, concerning the courtship between Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge, and articles on Native Americans and African Americans for the 1930s Federal Writers’ Project.
Babcock would later be known as the founder and curator of the Museum of Natural History and Antiquities in Little Rock, which was ultimately housed in the Arsenal Building on City Park grounds. Today the building is known as the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History. Babcock retired from the museum in 1953 and moved to a small house on top of Petit Jean Mountain, where she passed June 14, 1962.