Julia Ann was likely the daughter of Old Charles and Seny Walker at Swift Creek. She first appears in the historical record in Zachariah Lamar’s 1832 will, when she was bequeathed to John B. She was among the enslaved people listed as hired out in 1841. By the late 1840s, Lamar relocated her to the newly-acquired Sumter County plantation. Overseer B.J. Brantley noted she gave birth on April 1, 1853, but several days later wrote that “Julians child deid on Tuesday last.” By 1859, she had been relocated again to the Cowart Place Plantation in Sumter County. There, she gave birth to a daughter named Leah. The surviving records do not indicate she married while in bondage, but, following emancipation, she married Edmund Harris in Sumter County. It is possible that after the Civil War, she served as a nurse for Howell Cobb, Jr.’s son in Milledgeville.

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