Author Julie Palmer Smith was born in Clarkson, New York on September 3, 1818 and married on July 16, 1850 to Morris W. Smith of Hartford, Connecticut. Morris Smith worked for his family's saddlery business. Although the business was headquartered in Hartford, Smith was in charge of the business's concerns in New Orleans. Because the Smiths spent many months apart (173 to be exact), they corresponded extensively. From the time they met in 1846 until Julie's death in 1883, the coupled logged over 1,500 letters-often written on Sunday to provide "mutual support."
Ms. Smith published ten novels between 1859 and 1883 and, during her lifetime, sold more than 28,350 copies of her books. In 1871, from royalties from her first book, she purchased Esperanza, the current shingle-style home at 511 Town Hill Road. (Esperanza means Anchor of Hope in Spanish)
Julie Smith's stories were written for young people. She introduced some of the same characters in her earlier works into later works-unable to "let them die." Smith's love of the poor and sympathy for their suffering was "strongly manifest in her books."
Smith disliked the restricted life of women of her era and the triviality she perceived in their lives. Her women characters were defiant and self-sufficient and her young female characters often rejected respectable suitors who treated them as slaves.
She was a friend to novelist Mary Jane Holmes and to Harriett Beecher Stowe's sister, Isabella Beecher Hooker. Julie Smith died in New Hartford in September 1883 when she was thrown from her horse drawn carriage
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