A posthumous child, Julia was born May 17, 1832 South Kingston, RI (eight months after the death of her father, Japhet Bicknell). Japhet Bicknell was 52 years old when he married her mother, his second wife, Julia Ann Carpenter, who was 16 years old at the time of her marriage about 1824/25. Julia Ann Bicknell was married first in 1850 (and widowed) in Rhode Island to Daniel Ransom Clarke who was b. 1830 in Rhode Island and had two sons by him, Daniel (Dan) and Benjamin Franklin (Ben). On May 16, 1855, Daniel Ransom Clarke went fishing with a friend on the salt pond near their home, the boat capsized, and Daniel's gum boots filled with water, and he subsequently drowned. After the death of her first husband, Julia Ann joined a group assembling at Providence, R.I. to sail around Cape Horn to California. After landing in San Francisco in 1855, Julia Ann and Nicholas Broyles were wed. Julia died Jan 18, 1919 in Marysville CA. The Yuba River area in the Sierra foothills was experiencing a gold rush at the time and Nicholas and Julia Ann with her two sons by Daniel
Ransom Clarke left San Francisco with about 100 other gold seekers and headed for the gold fields there. In the hills high above the river, just off the Rice Crossing Road near present day Oregon House, in the Sierra foothills above the area, Julia and Nicholas found a small clearing alongside of which ran the 49er Trail, a main route to and from the Marysville area and the thriving mines and mining camps of the Yuba and Feather river drainages. Among the trees and shrubs of the Oak covered Sierra fioothills situated on the 49er Trail, which ran from North to South across their property as the trail connected then mining camps of the foothills, Nicholas and Julia settled and built a two story
log house with the kitchen sited above a natural spring with their meadow stretching to the right and the barn /smithy near the road. Nicholas was a hostler - his house served as a waystation where weary travelers rested and ate while their harness was repaired or a wagon fixed or a
horse shod. Their house, also serving as a gathering place for the locals for dancing and holidays, became known as the "Broyles Place" and in it were born and raised the seven Broyles children and the two Clarke boys, all of whom were working as soon as able. The Broyles Place
prospered and Nicholas and Julia filed on several other pieces of property in the area, ultimately resulting in an area known as the Broyles Ranch which is now (2005) split into several large acreages and a number of isolated homes in the timber. After the death of her second husband, Julia Ann remained on the Broyles place until shortly before her death which occurred in the Marysville hospital on January 18, 1919; she was interred in the same plot with Nicholas, and their children Mayme, John A., and William Henry, are buried in that plot in the Keystone Cemetery, Indiana Ranch Road, near Oregon House, Yuba County, CA. All the graves are well-marked and Nicholas's monument is a 5 foot marble Victorian style obelisk.