Julia Farley Loving was born in Lovington, Virginia in 1857. Although it has been suggested by descendants of the Dinsmore family that she was the child of a white slaveowner and an enslaved African American woman, thus far this has not been substantiated. By 1880, Julia and her younger sister and brother, Emma and Walter, were living in St. Paul, Minnesota, where they became acquainted with the Charles E. Flandrau family. As a female African American in the late 1800s, Julia’s career path was confined to only a few alternatives; the choice she made to become a household servant for Patty and Tilden Selmes was a result of the limitations put on her by society. Within her role as cook, cleaning woman, and nanny, however, she managed to rise above the boundaries that others tried to set, becoming educated and well-traveled and using her connections with the Selmes and Dinsmore families to help her own family.

In 1883 Julia agreed to become a household servant for Patty Selmes, a newlywed who was moving with her husband to the Dakota Territory near the town of Mandan. Isolated on the couple’s ranch for months at a time, the two women came to depend on each other’s strengths – Julia’s sense of economy and Patty’s ability to raise flagging spirits. When Patty became pregnant in 1885, Julia informed her that she was to be married in St. Paul to a man named Smith. We know little about this man because soon after Julia reached the big city she wrote, “Smith and I had a big split up and do not speak as we pass by.”¹ Instead of perhaps escaping the world of a household servant and becoming a wife, Julia returned to Patty, who was then in Boone County, Kentucky awaiting the birth of her first child. In March of 1886 a little girl, Isabella Dinsmore Selmes, was born and her presence forever altered Julia’s position in the family although the change was not immediately apparent.

When the Selmes family returned to their ranch, Julia continued to cook and clean but now she was also asked to take care of the infant, Isabella. When the family removed to St. Paul and as Isabella grew older, she came more and more under the African American woman’s care and the family began to refer to Julia as “Mammy” – a reference to antebellum times. Neither Patty nor Julia Dinsmore had a “mammy” as a child. However, in the late 1800s, the term in reference to African American nannies reappeared among European Americans. Interestingly, Julia Loving only referred to herself as “Mammy” when she was writing to Isabella; when she wrote to Julia Dinsmore, she more often than not used her given name. Although she may have considered “Mammy” to be like a nickname—Isabella was “Dimp,” Patty was “Muddy,” and Julia Dinsmore was “Owny”—outside the family only an African American woman could be a “Mammy.”

Although Julia secretly contemplated marriage again in 1892, she never did leave the Selmes family and their descendants. Following Tilden Selmes’ death in 1895, Julia and Isabella moved in with Patty’s father in St. Paul, where Isabella was to begin her schooling. Since she was tutored at home, Julia had the opportunity to sit in on some of the lessons and her letters indicate that she did just that, becoming fluent in French and knowledgeable in contemporary fiction. She maintained a close relationship with the Flandrau family and with Julia Dinsmore in Kentucky. There is reason to believe that she may have even been acquainted with or employed by the Flandrau family prior to being hired to go to the Dakota Territory. Julia wrote to Patty in 1885 about the medical troubles her sister was having and concluded, “I guess I will have to get some money from your Father to send her home.”² The Flandrau and Dinsmore family also went out of their way to help Walter Loving. Patty had hired Walter in the mid 1880s, but finding him unreliable she sent him to school in St. Paul to learn to wait tables. Graduating from high school in Washington, D.C., he enlisted as a musician in the 24th Regiment of the Infantry. As the Dinsmore descendants recollected, Julia Dinsmore was so impressed with Walter’s musical abilities that she paid to send him to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, where he learned to conduct. He served as bandmaster in several units but wanted to go to the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. Both Patty Selmes and her father, Charles Flandrau, wrote to Vice-President, and then President, Theodore Roosevelt, and in 1902, Walter became the bandmaster of the Philippine Constabulary Band, which “won recognition for it superior performances” and toured widely.³ Many years later he died in the Philippines.

In 1901, Julia Loving accompanied Isabella and Patty to New York City where Isabella was to attend school. When Patty decided to take Isabella to Europe, she insisted that Julia go along, and Julia decided that it would be best for her to do so, since Patty had begun drinking after her husband’s death. In writing to Julia Dinsmore to decline the latter’s invitation to spend the summer at Boone, Julia Loving described the necessity of her going with Isabella to Europe and concluded the letter with a somber note, “Think of me at my post, as the boy stood on the burning deck when all but him had fled.”⁴ The lines recalled to both women the poem, “Casabianca” based on an event that occurred during the Battle of the Nile in 1798, when a young boy refused to leave a burning ship because his dead father would not give him permission. She kept an eye on Isabella when Patty could not, but she was also able to enjoy herself in England and France, touring Windsor Castle and the Tower of London, among other sites. From England, Julia wrote about the impression she made on other servants by her fluency in French and by Patty asking her for money in front of them, wondering aloud if the African American and white women were related.⁵

A year after their return from Europe, Julia was helping Isabella through her debutante season. While Patty chaperoned and mended dresses, Julia accompanied Isabella to several overnight parties, including a stay at the White House. Martha Ferguson Breasted, Isabella’s daughter, retold the story later, emphasizing the fact that what most impressed Julia about her visit to our nation’s capital was that she was allowed to enter the White House through the front door. Since Julia had known the President from their days in the Dakota Territory together, this story may have some truth to it.

Julia’s relationship with the Selmes’ women deteriorated after Isabella married Robert Ferguson in 1905, perhaps as a result of Patty’s drinking or maybe as a result of Julia’s ambiguous position. With her charge married, she stayed with Sally Cutcheon in Long Island and waited for Isabella and Robert to need her. One year after their marriage, with the birth of Martha, Julia took up her former role and quickly became very attached to the little girl and her brother, Bobby, and she even agreed to move to the mountains of New Mexico to continue taking care of them. At fifty-three, Julia found herself living in a tent and doing all sort of odd jobs which she described to Julia Dinsmore in a letter, “I go from 630 until 930 P.M. only stopping to eat my meals. With two children, 28 chickens, washing, and ironing for the children, gathering wood, taking care of our tent is enough for one of my age.”⁶ In 1913, she fell ill and went to New York City to undergo a hysterectomy, recuperating in Boone County with Julia Dinsmore.

For the remainder of her life, which was a long one, Julia Loving appears to have stayed in California. When Isabella bought property in Santa Barbara in 1920, Sally followed suit, so the families could spend time together. Sally had a place for Julia to stay so she kept an eye on both houses. Patty continued to send her a monthly allowance and after Patty died, Sally and Isabella did the same. Eventually, Julia moved to Los Angeles where her brother Walter occasionally lived and where Martha Ferguson visited her often. When Julia died in 1950, Isabella had her brought back to Boone County where she was buried in the same graveyard as Julia Dinsmore, Patty Selmes, and, later, Dimp – the women with whom she had spent so much of her adult life.

Unfortunately, the racism Julia must have dealt with during her life followed her almost literally to her grave. The undertaker who picked her coffin up at the airport, realizing that he was transporting a deceased African American, dropped her coffin at the end of the Dinsmore driveway and refused to move it, leaving it to the family to transport Julia’s six-foot frame up the steep hill to the graveyard. Forty-five years later, when Martha Ferguson Breasted died, she requested that her body be cremated and her ashes be placed in the grave of Julia Farley Loving. Julia remains the sole African American buried in the family graveyard who has an engraved headstone.

¹ Julia Farley Loving to Patty F. Selmes, 11 November 1885.
² Julia Farley Loving to Patty F. Selmes, 18 December 1885.
³ Albert E. Wier, ed., The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians in One Volume (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938), n.p.
⁴ Julia Farley Loving to Julia Dinsmore, 10 May 1903.
⁵ Ibid., 15 July 1903.
⁶ Ibid., 30 December 1910.