Julia A. Warner (maiden name unknown) was probably born in the 1840s in Kentucky. She probably grew up in Lexington, Kentucky. She was engaged to Frederick Hazelhurst, but her father disapproved of the match, and the couple broke off the engagement. She then married John F. Warner, and the couple may have had one child. Her husband enlisted in the Union army in 1864, and after the Civil War ended, he was stationed in the West. He brought Julia with him to Fort Selden in the New Mexico Territory around August 1866.

 

Hazelhurst served in the same regiment, and her husband suspected that he and Julia were having an affair. Her husband forced her to return to Kentucky, and he reportedly began divorce proceedings. He confronted Hazelhurst on October 23, 1866, and the two men killed each other in the subsequent fight. Newspapers across the country reported on he scandal.

 

In November 1866, she wrote in distress to Adjutant Nathaniel Wheeler, observing that the scandal had “disgraced me forever…all I have is my character & when it is gone all is gone.” “I can say before my God,” she continued, that “I am guilty of no criminal act.”

 

She applied for a widow’s pension in February 1867 but never received one. She died sometime after February 1867.

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