Clarissa "Clara" Harlowe Barton (December 25, 1821 - April 12, 1912) was a pioneering nurse who founded the American Red Cross. She was a hospital nurse in the American Civil War, a teacher, and patent clerk. Nursing education was not very formalized at that time and Clara did not attend nursing school, so she provided self-taught nursing care. Barton is noteworthy for doing humanitarian work at a time when relatively few women worked outside the home. She had a relationship with John J. Elwell and received three proposals throughout her lifetime, but never married.
Video Clara Barton
Early life
Clara Barton was born on December 25, 1821, in North Oxford, Massachusetts. Barton's father was Captain Stephen Barton, a member of the local militia and a selectman who inspired his daughter with patriotism and a broad humanitarian interest. He was a soldier under the command of General Anthony Wayne in his crusade against the Indians in the northwest. He was also the leader of progressive thought in the Oxford village area. Barton's mother was Sarah Stone Barton.
When she was three years old, Clara Barton was sent to school with her brother Stephen, where she excelled in reading and spelling. At school, she became close friends with Nancy Fitts; she is the only known friend Clara Barton had as a child due to her extreme timidity.
When Clara was 10, she assigned herself the task of nursing her brother David back to health after he fell from the roof of a barn and received a severe injury. Clara learned how to distribute the prescribed medication to her brother, as well as how to place leeches on his body to bleed him (a standard treatment at this time). She continued to care for David long after doctors had given up. He made a full recovery.
Her parents tried to help cure her shyness by sending her to Col. Stones High School, but their strategy turned out to be a disaster. Clara became more timid and depressed and would not eat. She was brought back home to regain her health.
Upon her return, her family relocated to help a family member: a paternal cousin of Clara's had died and left his wife with four children and a farm. The house that the Barton family was to live in needed to be painted and repaired. Clara was persistent in offering assistance, much to the gratitude of her family. After the work was done, Clara was at a loss because she had nothing else to help with, to not feel like a burden to her family.
She began to play with her male cousins and, to their surprise, she was good at keeping up with such activities as horseback riding. It was not until after she had injured herself that Clara's mother began to question her playing with the boys. Clara's mother decided she should focus on more feminine skills. She invited one of Clara's female cousins over to help develop her femininity. From her cousin, she gained proper social skills as well.
To assist Clara with overcoming her shyness, her parents persuaded her to become a schoolteacher. She achieved her first teacher's certificate in 1839, at only 17 years old. This profession interested Barton greatly and helped motivate her; she ended up conducting an effective redistricting campaign that allowed the children of workers to receive an education. Successful projects such as this gave Clara the confidence needed when she demanded equal pay for teaching.
Maps Clara Barton
Early professional life
Clara Barton became an educator in 1838 for 12 years in schools in Canada and West Georgia. Barton fared well as a teacher and knew how to handle rambunctious children, particularly the boys, since as a child she enjoyed her male cousins' and brothers' company. She learned how to act like them, making it easier for her to relate to and control the boys in her classroom since they respected her. After her mother's death in 1851, the family home closed down. Barton decided to further her education by pursuing writing and languages at the Clinton Liberal Institute in New York. In this college town, she developed many friendships that broadened her point of view on many issues concurring at the time. The principal of the institute recognized her tremendous abilities and admired her work. This friendship lasted for many years, eventually turning into a romance. As a writer, her terminology was pristine and easy to understand. Her writings and bodies of work could instruct the local statesmen. No one could exceed her outstanding service to humanity in war and in peace.
While teaching in Hightstown, Clara Barton learned about the lack of public schools in Bordentown, the neighboring city. In 1852, she was contracted to open a free school in Bordentown, which was the first ever free school in New Jersey. She was successful, and after a year she had hired another woman to help teach over 600 people. Both women were making $250 a year. This accomplishment compelled the town to raise nearly $4,000 for a new school building. Once completed, though, Barton was replaced as principal by a man elected by the school board. They saw the position as head of a large institution to be unfitting for a woman. She was demoted to "female assistant" and worked in a harsh environment until she had a nervous breakdown along with other health ailments, and quit.
In 1855, she moved to Washington D.C. and began work as a clerk in the US Patent Office; this was the first time a woman had received a substantial clerkship in the federal government and at a salary equal to a man's salary. For three years, she received much abuse and slander from male clerks. Subsequently, under political opposition to women working in government offices, her position was reduced to that of copyist, and in 1856, under the administration of James Buchanan, she was fired because of her "Black Republicanism." After the election of Abraham Lincoln, having lived with relatives and friends in Massachusetts for three years, she returned to the patent office in the autumn of 1861, now as temporary copyist, in the hope she could make way for more women in government service.
American Civil War
On April 19, 1861, the Baltimore Riot resulted in the first bloodshed of the American Civil War. Victims within the Massachusetts regiment were transported to Washington D.C. after the violence, which happened to be Clara Barton's home at the time. Wanting to serve her country, Barton went to the railroad station when the victims arrived and nursed 40 men. Barton provided crucial, personal assistance to the men in uniform, many of whom were wounded, hungry and without any supplies besides what they carried on their backs. She began helping them by personally taking supplies to the unfinished Capitol Building where the young men of the 6th Massachusetts Militia, who had been attacked in Baltimore, Maryland, were housed.
Barton quickly recognized them, as she had grown up with some of them, and some she had even taught. Barton, along with several other women, personally provided clothing, food, and supplies for the sick and wounded soldiers. She learned how to store and distribute medical supplies and offered emotional support to the soldiers by keeping their spirits high. She would read books to them, write letters to their families for them, talk to them, and support them.
It was on that day that she identified herself with army work and began her efforts towards collecting medical supplies for the Union soldiers. Prior to distributing provisions directly onto the battlefield and gaining further support, Barton used her own living quarters as a storeroom and distributed supplies with the help of a few friends in early 1862, despite opposition in the War Department and among field surgeons. Ladies' Aid societies helped in sending bandages, food, and clothing that would later be distributed during the Civil War. In August 1862, Barton finally gained permission from Quartermaster Daniel Rucker to work on the front lines. She gained support from other people who believed in her cause. These people became her patrons, her most supportive being Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts.
After the First Battle of Bull Run, Barton placed an ad in a Massachusetts newspaper for supplies; the response was a profound influx of supplies. She worked to distribute stores, clean field hospitals, apply dressings, and serve food to wounded soldiers in close proximity to several battles, including Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. Barton helped both Union and Confederate soldiers. Supplies were not always readily available though. At the battle of Antietam, for example, Barton used corn-husks in place of bandages
In 1863 she began a romantic relationship with an officer, Colonel John J. Elwell.
In 1864, she was appointed by Union General Benjamin Butler as the "lady in charge" of the hospitals at the front of the Army of the James. Among her more harrowing experiences was an incident in which a bullet tore through the sleeve of her dress without striking her and killed a man to whom she was tending. She was known as the "American Nightingale." She was also known as the "Angel of the Battlefield" after she came to the aid of the overwhelmed surgeon on duty following the battle of Cedar Mountain in Northern Virginia in August 1862. She arrived at a field hospital at midnight with a large amount of supplies to help the severely wounded soldiers. This naming came from her frequent timely assistance as she served troops at the battles of Fairfax Station, Chantilly, Harpers Ferry, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Charleston, Petersburg and Cold Harbor.
Post American Civil War
After the end of the American Civil War, Clara Barton discovered that thousands of letters from distraught relatives to the War Department were going unanswered because the soldiers they were questioning about were buried in unmarked graves. Many of these soldiers were labeled just as "missing". Motivated to do more about the situation, Miss Barton contacted President Lincoln in hopes that she would be allowed to respond officially to these unanswered inquiries. She was given permission, and "The Search for the Missing Men" commenced.
After the war, she ran the Office of Missing Soldiers, at 437 ½ Seventh Street, Northwest, Washington, D.C. in the Gallery Place neighborhood. The office's purpose was to find or identify soldiers killed or missing in action. Barton and her assistants wrote 41,855 replies to inquiries and helped locate more than twenty-two thousand missing men. Barton spent the summer of 1865 helping find, identify, and properly bury 13,000 individuals who died in Andersonville prison camp, a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in Georgia. She continued this task over the next four years, burying 20,000 more Union soldiers and marking their graves. Congress eventually appropriated $15,000 toward her project.
American Red Cross
Barton achieved widespread recognition by delivering lectures around the country about her war experiences in 1865-1868. During this time she met Susan B. Anthony and began a long association with the woman's suffrage movement. She also became acquainted with Frederick Douglass and became an activist for civil rights. After her country wide tour she was both mentally and physically exhausted and under doctor's orders to go somewhere that would take her far from her current work. She closed the Missing Soldiers Office in 1868 and traveled to Europe. In 1869, during her trip to Geneva, Switzerland, Barton was introduced to the Red Cross and Dr. Appia; who later would invite her to be the representative for the American branch of the Red Cross and even help her find financial beneficiaries for the start of the American Red Cross. She was also introduced to Henry Dunant's book A Memory of Solferino, which called for the formation of national societies to provide relief voluntarily on a neutral basis.
At the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War, in 1870, she assisted the Grand Duchess of Baden in the preparation of military hospitals, and gave the Red Cross society much aid during the war. At the joint request of the German authorities and the Strasbourg Comité de Secours, she superintended the supplying of work to the poor of Strasbourg in 1871, after the Siege of Paris, and in 1871 had charge of the public distribution of supplies to the destitute people of Paris. At the close of the war, she received honorable decorations of the Golden Cross of Baden and the Prussian Iron Cross.
When Barton returned to the United States, she inaugurated a movement to gain recognition for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) by the United States government. In 1873, she began work on this project. In 1878, she met with President Rutherford B. Hayes, who expressed the opinion of most Americans at that time which was the U.S. would never again face a calamity like the Civil War. Barton finally succeeded during the administration of President Chester Arthur, using the argument that the new American Red Cross could respond to crises other than war such as natural disasters like earthquakes, forest fires, and hurricanes.
Barton became President of the American branch of the society, which held its first official meeting at her I Street apartment in Washington, DC, May 21, 1881. The first local society was founded August 22, 1882 in Dansville, Livingston County, New York, where she maintained a country home.
The society's role changed with the advent of the Spanish-American War during which it aided refugees and prisoners of the civil war. Once the Spanish-American war was over the great people of Santiago built a statue in honor of Clara Barton in the town square. The statue of Clara Barton still stands their today.
Domestically in 1884 she helped in the floods on the Ohio river, provided Texas with food and supplies during the famine of 1887 and took workers to Illinois in 1888 after a tornado and that same year to Florida for the yellow fever epidemic. Within days after the Johnstown Flood in 1889, she led her delegation of 50 doctors and nurses in response. In 1897, responding to the humanitarian crisis in the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of the Hamidian Massacres, Barton sailed to Constantinople and after long negotiations with Abdul Hamid II, opened the first American International Red Cross headquarters in the heart of Turkey. Barton herself traveled along with five other Red Cross expeditions to the Armenian provinces in the spring of 1896, providing relief and humanitarian aid. Barton also worked in hospitals in Cuba in 1898 at the age of seventy-seven. Barton's last field operation as President of the American Red Cross was helping victims of the Galveston hurricane in 1900. The operation established an orphanage for children.
As criticism arose of her mixing professional and personal resources, Barton was forced to resign as president of the American Red Cross in 1904, at the age of 83 because of her egocentric leadership style fitting poorly into the formal structure of organizational charity. She had been forced out of office by a new generation of all-male scientific experts who reflected the realistic efficiency of the Progressive Era rather than her idealistic humanitarianism. In memory of the courageous women of the civil war, the Red Cross Headquarters was founded. During the dedication, not one person said a word. This was done in order to honor the women and their services. After resigning, Barton founded the National First Aid Society.
Final years
She continued to live in her Glen Echo, Maryland home which also served as the Red Cross Headquarters upon her arrival to the house in 1897. Barton published her autobiography in 1907, titled The Story of My Childhood. On April 12, 1912 at the age of 90, she died in her home. The cause of death was tuberculosis.
Religious beliefs
Although not formally a member of the Universalist Church of America, in a 1905 letter to the widow of Carl Norman Thrasher, she identified herself with her parents' church as a "Universalist". While she was not an active member of her parents' church, Clara wrote about how well known her family was in her hometown and how many relationships her father formed with others in their town through their church and religion.
Clara Barton National Historic Site
In 1975, the Clara Barton National Historic Site, located at 5801 Oxford Road, Glen Echo, Maryland, was established as a unit of the National Park Service at Barton's home, where she spent the last 15 years of her life. As the first National Historic Site dedicated to the accomplishments of a woman, it preserves the early history of the American Red Cross, since the home also served as an early headquarters of the organization. The North Oxford, Massachusetts, house in which she was born is now also a museum.
The National Park Service has restored eleven rooms, including the Red Cross offices, the parlors and Barton's bedroom. Visitors to Clara Barton National Historic Site can gain a sense of how Barton lived and worked. Guides lead tourists through the three levels, emphasizing Barton's use of her unusual home. Modern visitors can come to appreciate the site in the same way visitors did in Clara Barton's lifetime.
Clara Barton's Missing Soldiers Office
In 1869, Clara Barton closed the Missing Soldiers Office and headed to Europe. The third floor of her old boardinghouse was boarded up in 1913, and the site forgotten. The site was "lost" in part because the city realigned its addressing system in the 1870s. The boardinghouse became 437 ½ Seventh Street Northwest (formerly 488-1/2 Seventh Street West).
In 1997, General Services Administration carpenter Richard Lyons was hired to check out the building for its demolition. He found a treasure trove of Clara Barton items in the attic, including signs, clothing, Civil War soldier's socks, an army tent, Civil War-era newspapers, and many documents relating to the Office of Missing Soldiers. This discovery led to the NPS saving the building from demolition. It took years, however, for the site to be restored. The Clara Barton's Missing Soldiers Office Museum, run by the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, opened in 2015.
Fictional depictions
- Numbering All the Bones by Ann Rinaldi features Clara Barton and Andersonville Prison, a Civil War prison with terrible conditions.
- Angel of Mercy (MGM, 1939) is a biographical short film directed by Edward L. Cahn, starring Sara Haden as Clara Barton and Ann Rutherford as a woman whose brother's death in a Civil War battle inspires her to join Barton in her work.
- In the NBC TV series Voyagers! (1982-1983), Phineas Bogg and Jeffrey Jones travel through time to make sure history proceeds correctly. In the episode "The Travels of Marco ... and Friends", season 1, episode 9, original airdate December 3, 1982, Phineas and Jeffrey rescue Clara Barton (Patricia Donahue) from a burning wagon, but she is on the verge of succumbing to smoke inhalation. Jeffrey (a young boy from 1982) applies mouth-to-mouth resuscitation (a technique unknown in Barton's time) and saves her life, thus enabling her to go on to found the American Red Cross.
Places named for Clara Barton
Schools
- Clara Barton Elementary School in Levittown, Pennsylvania
- Barton Hall at Montclair State University in Upper Montclair, New Jersey
- Clara Barton Elementary on Del Amo Boulevard in Long Beach, California
- Clara Barton Elementary School in Alton, Illinois
- Clara Barton Elementary School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
- Clara Barton Elementary School in Anaheim, California
- Clara Barton Elementary School in The Bronx
- Clara Barton Elementary School in Cherry Hill, New Jersey
- Clara Barton Elementary School in Chicago
- Clara Barton Elementary School in Corona, California
- Clara Barton Elementary School in Oxford, Massachusetts
- Clara Barton Elementary School in San Diego (now San Diego Cooperative Charter School)
- Clara Barton Elementary School in Rochester NY
- Clara Barton Elementary School in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania
- Clara Barton Junior High School in Royal Oak, Michigan
- Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn
- Clara Barton House, a residence hall at Towson University, Towson, Maryland
- Clara Barton Open School in Minneapolis
- Clara Barton School, in Cabin John, Maryland, now the Clara Barton Community Center
- Clara Barton School in Bordentown, New Jersey
- Clara Barton School in Fargo, North Dakota
- Clara Barton School in Philadelphia
Streets
- Clara Barton Road in Oxford, Massachusetts
- Clara Barton Lane in Galveston, Texas
- Barton Boulevard in Rockledge, Florida
- Clara Barton Drive in Albany, New York
- Clara Barton Drive in Fairfax Station, Virginia
- Clara Barton Parkway in Maryland
- Clara Barton Street in Dansville, NY
- Clara Barton Boulevard in Garland, TX
- Clara Barton Circle in Sylacauga, AL
Other
- Barton, a crater on Venus
- Barton Center for Diabetes Education, North Oxford, Massachusetts
- Barton County, Kansas
- Barton Towers, in Royal Oak, Michigan, on the former site of Clara Barton Junior High School
- Barton Hall, Iowa State University
- Barton's Crossing, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a homeless shelter
- Clara Barton Community Center, Cabin John, Maryland
- Clara Barton District, a regional association of Unitarian Universalist Association member congregations
- Clara Barton First Aid Squad, Edison, New Jersey
- Clara Barton Hospital and Clinics, Hoisington, Kansas
- Clara Barton Service Area, on the New Jersey Turnpike in Oldmans Township, New Jersey
- Clara Barton, New Jersey
- Clara Barton Tree, a giant sequoia tree in the Giant Forest, Sequoia National Park
- Clara Barton Memorial Forest in Lake Clear, New York, planted in 1925
- Lake Barton in Burke, Virginia
- Barton House in Towson University
Published works
- Barton, Clara H. The Red Cross-In Peace and War. Washington, D.C.: American Historical Press, 1898. OCLC 1187508.
- Barton, Clara H. Story of the Red Cross-Glimpses of Field Work. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1904. OCLC 5807882.
- Barton, Clara H. The Story of My Childhood. New York: Baker & Taylor Company, 1907. Reprinted by Arno Press in 1980. OCLC 6015444.
Notes
Further reading
- Ardalan, Christine. "Clara Barton's 1898 battles in Cuba: a reexamination of her nursing contributions." Florida Atlantic Comparative Studies Journal 12.1 (2010). online
- Barton, William E. The Life of Clara Barton Founder of the American Red Cross. (1922) OCLC 164624867.
- Burton, David Henry. Clara Barton: in the service of humanity (Greenwood, 1995); Major scholarly study online
- Crompton, Samuel Etinde. Clara Barton: Humanitarian. New York: Chelsea House, 2009. ISBN 978-1-60413-492-6. OCLC 290489234.
- Deady, Kathleen W. Clara Barton. Mankato: Capstone Press, 2003. ISBN 0-7368-1604-6. OCLC 50022907.
- Dulles Foster R. The American Red Cross: A History (1950)
- Henle, Ellen Langenheim. "Clara Barton, Soldier or Pacifist?." Civil War History 24.2 (1978): 152-160. online
- Hutchinson, John F. Champions of Charity: War and the Rise of the Red Cross. Boulder: Westview Press, Inc., 1996. ISBN 0-8133-2526-9 OCLC 33948775.
- Jones, Marian Moser. The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. ISBN 978-1-4214-0738-8 OCLC 786245443
- Joyce, James Avery. Red Cross International and the Strategy of Peace. New York: Oceana Publications, Inc., 1959. OCLC 263367.
- Oates, Stephen B. A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War. New York: Free Press, 1994. ISBN 0-02-923405-0 OCLC 29259364
- Pryor, Elizabeth Brown. Clara Barton: Professional Angel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987. ISBN 0-8122-8060-1 OCLC 15792319.
- Ross, Ishbel. Angel of the Battlefield: The Life of Clara Barton. New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1956. OCLC 420062.
- Safranski, Debby Burnett. Angel of Andersonville, Prince of Tahiti: The Extraordinary Life of Dorence Atwater. Alling-Porterfield Publishing House, 2008. ISBN 0-9749767-1-7 OCLC 613558868
- Holder, Victoria L (Oct 2003). "From hand maiden to right hand-the birth of nursing in America". Association of Operations Room Nurses. 78 (4): 618-32.
Historiography
- Amico, Eleanor B., ed. Reader's Guide to Women's Studies ( Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998) pg.56-57
External links
- Clara Barton National Historic Site
- Clara Barton Birthplace Museum
- Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office
- The Barton Center For Diabetes Education, Inc.
- Clara Barton Passport Application - 1869 (Original document image)
- Clara Barton, A Register of Her Papers in the Library of Congress
- Clara Barton Papers, Sophia Smith Collection
- The personal papers of Clara Barton are in the Andover-Harvard Theological Library at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- Works by Clara Barton at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Clara Barton at Internet Archive
- Works by Clara Barton at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Clara Barton at Find a Grave
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