Julia Marshall
Era: World War I
Military Branch: Army
Julia Marshall was born in 1896 in Duluth, where her father developed a national wholesale hardware business. She graduated from the Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.During World War I she took a course in cafeteria management and worked as a volunteer in food service at an army base in San Antonio. She also studied photography during the 1920’s.
When World War II began, she turned down a commission as an officer and was the first woman from Duluth to enlist in the Woman’s Army Corps. She did not get a hoped-for overseas assignment but served at an Army base in Mississippi, working in food service and photography. Later she recalled that service:
“During World War II I was a WAC, doing darkroom work and some photography. I remember an assignment to take pictures of recruits running through a gas-filled Quonset hut. They told me I had to use a gas mask, but who can use a camera that way? So I took the pictures while the others wore the masks.”
After the war, she was active in civic projects in Duluth and contributed to many local causes. The Marshall School and Marshall Performing Arts Center at the University of Minnesota-Duluth are both named after her family. She died in 1994.
