Barton, Clara, 1821-1912

Civil War nurse, suffragist, and founder of the American Red Cross

Clarissa Harlow Barton was born in North Oxford, MA, on December 25, 1821, the fifth and last child of Stephen and Sarah (Stone) Barton. She was a shy and lonely child, and for two years at the age of eleven she devoted her time to nursing her brother David during a protracted illness, an experience which later affected her life's work. At eighteen she began to teach in neighboring schools. In 1850 she spent a year at the Liberal Institute of Clinton, NY. She resumed her teaching in New Jersey where, in 1852, she founded the state's first free or public school in Bordentown. In February 1854 she resigned to take up a position as clerk in the Patent Office in Washington DC., possibly the first regularly appointed woman civil servant. Deprived of her position in 1857 after a Democratic victory, she returned to Oxford. She returned to the Patent Office in late 1860. At the beginning of the Civil War, witnessing the almost total lack of first-aid supplies at the battle of Bull Run, she advertised for provisions. Using her own limited quarters as a storeroom, she accumulated supplies and, with a few friends, began in the summer of 1862 to distribute them by mule team to hospitals and camps on the battlefields. Barton had an uncanny ability to short-circuit military routine, appearing at military engagements with needed supplies, and increasingly she won the respect and admiration of commanding officers and surgeons. As the Sanitary Commission and other agencies grew more organized, Barton's role diminished, but in June 1864, she accepted an appointment as head nurse in Benjamin Butler's Army of the James. In 1865 she established an office in Annapolis where she and a few assistants sought to piece together information concerning missing men and in July 1865 she directed the marking of the graves of almost 13,000 men who died in Andersonville Prison. Between 1866 and 1868, while continuing her missing persons work, she lectured throughout the North and West. Exhausted by her activities, she went to Europe in 1868 for rest and recuperation. While there she worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). She also distributed funds provided by American relief committees in France. At the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish war in 1877 she initiated a five-year campaign for the organization of the American Red Cross Society. In March 1882, American affiliation with the International Red Cross was accomplished and Barton was chosen president of the American Association of the Red Cross. Between 1881 and 1904 she devoted her energies to Red Cross work, providing relief in disasters domestic and abroad, including aid to Cuban civilians and American soldiers during the Spanish American War. By 1904, new methods and leadership were needed and she was forced to resign by the board of directors. She moved to Glen Echo, MD in 1897, where she organized the National First Aid Association of America in 1906. She died April 12, 1912, and was buried in North Oxford, MA.

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