Julia Arabelle DeMeritt was born on July 7, 1847, in Montpelier, Vermont, to John and Amira DeMeritt. Her father was a cutler who owned $300 of personal property by 1860. She grew up and attended school in Montpelier. She married Horace Flanders. They moved to Portland, Oregon, in the late 1800s, to Waterbury, Vermont, in the early 1900s, and then to San Antonio, California, in the 1910s. She died sometime after 1920.