Julia Burnell (Bernie) Smade Babcock
Julia Burnell (Bernie) Smade Babcock (1868-1962) was a writer and founder of the Arkansas Museum of Natural History and Antiquities in Little Rock, Arkansas. She was the author of The Daughter of the Republican (1900), The Martyr (1900), Justice to the Women (1901), A Political Fool (1902), and By Way of the Master Passion.
In 1927 she opened the Museum of Natural History on Main Street in Little Rock. One of the earliest displays centered on King Crowley, an inauthentic pre-Columbian artifact. The museum moved to the third floor of City Hall later that same year. Henry Fairfield Osborn of the Natural History Museum in New York augmented the collection in 1928 with crates full of stuffed animals. The museum was closed during the depths of the Great Depression, reopening in 1941 in the Tower Building of what would eventually be called MacArthur Park.
Smade was born in Union, Ohio, and raised in Russellville, Arkansas. She attended college for one year at Little Rock College before marrying William Franklin Babcock in 1886.
References
- Marcia Camp, "The Soul of Bernie Babcock," Pulaski County Historical Review 36 (Fall 1988): 50-62.
