Clara+Barton

C l a r a B a r t o n


 * (1821-1912)**



> She also expanded her concept of soldier aid, traveling to Camp Parole, Maryland, to organize a program for locating men listed as missing in action (M.I.A). Through interviews with Federals returning from Southern prisons, Clara was often able to determine the status of some of the missing men and notify families. In 1904 she resigned as head of that organization, retiring to her home at Glen Echo, outside Washington, D.C., where she died 12 April 1912.
 * // “ //****// I’ll well, strong and young. I’m young enough to go to the front. If I cannot be soldier, I’ll help soldiers.” //**
 * Clara Barton was very hard working and determined woman. She was a pioneer American teacher, nurse, and humanitarian.
 * She was described as having a “strong and independent spirit”. Clara is remembered for organizing the American Red Cross and also her most notable antebellum achievement was the establishment of a free public school in Bordentown, N.J.
 * Clara Barton’s full name is: Clarissa Harlowe Barton. People called her Clara for short.
 * She was born on December 25, 1821 in Oxford, Massachusetts to parents, Stephen and Sarah Barton. She was the youngest of 5 children in a middle-class family. Barton was educated at home, and at the age of 15 she started teaching school. Clara’s parents were abolitionists. Her father was a farmer and horse breeder and her mother managed the household.
 * Clara’s only prewar medical experience came when for 2 years she nursed an invalid brother. In 1861, Barton lived in Washington D.C and was working at the U.S. Patent Office. When the 6th Massachusetts Regiment arrived in the city after the Baltimore Riots, she organized a relief program for the soldiers, beginning a lifetime of philanthropy. Barton learned that many soldiers suffered from the Battle of Bull Run because lack of medical supplies, and she then advertised for donations in Worchester, Mass. Clara Barton began an independent organization to distribute.
 * Clara Barton began an independent organization to distribute goods. The relief operation was successful, and the following year U.S. Surgeon General William A. Hammond granted her a general pass to travel with army ambulances "for the purpose of distributing comforts for the sick and wounded, and nursing them."
 * She formed her only formal Civil War connection with any organization when she served as superintendent of nurses in Maj. Gen. Benjamin F. Butlers command.
 * By the end of the war Barton had performed most of the services that would later be associated with the American Red Cross, which she founded in 1881.