Laura E. Richards, Maud Howe, Florence Howe Hall, Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910, in two volumes, with portraits and other illustrations: volume 1

[18] should inform him of the child's condition. A few days later, as he was riding homeward, a messenger came to meet him and silently laid in his hand a tiny shoe: the child was dead.

Not long after this, on May 27, 1819, a second daughter was born, and named Julia.

Julia Ward was very little when her parents moved to “a large house on the Bowling Green, a region of high fashion in those days.” ¹ Here were born three more children: Francis Marion, Louisa Cutler, and Ann Eliza. For some time before the birth of the lastnamed child, Mrs. Ward's health had been gradually failing, though every known measure had been used to restore it. There had been journeys to Niagara and up the Hudson, in the family coach, straw-color outside with linings and cushions of brilliant blue. Little Julia went with her mother on these journeys; the good elder sister, Eliza Cutler, was also of the party; and a physician, Dr. John Wakefield Francis, who was later to play an important part in the family life. Julia remembered many incidents of these journeys, though the latest of them took place when she was barely four years old. She sat in a little chair placed at the feet of her elders, and she used to tell us how, cramped with remaining in one position, she was constantly moving the chair, bringing its feet down on those of Dr. Francis, to his acute anguish. In spite of this, the good doctor would often read to her from a book of short tales and poems which had been brought for her amusement, and she always remembered his reading