Clara Barton

Clara Barton was born in Oxford, Massachusetts on December 25, 1821. Clarissa Harlowe Barton became a teacher at age 17 and later served as a copier in the United States Patent office in Washington D.C., before dedicating her life to voluntary service at the age of 40. During the Civil War she served as an independent volunteer on the Union side, helping with nursing and feeding, and by the end of the war her benevolence was legendary. Although not permitted to work with the International Red Cross because she was a woman she volunteered as an independent relief worker in Strasbourg, France during the Franco-Prussian war (1870-1871).

On May 21 1881, Barton was joined by Senator Omar Conger of Michigan and 22 others at her own modest residence to form the American Association of the Red Cross, which later became The American Red Cross. Barton lobbied tirelessly for the United States Ratification of the Geneva Convention, also known as the Treaty of Geneva, which was signed in March 1882.

Unlike the International Red Cross, which provided only battlefield relief, Barton’s society served America in war and in peace, and especially in times of disaster and national calamity, which Barton later stated was "the mainspring of all American worth for the Red Cross".

"The Angel of the Battlefield"

Clara Barton was not trained as a nurse but went on to found the American Red Cross in 1881. The Massachusetts native gained her first experience with the wounded when the casualties from the secessionist attack on the 6th Massachusetts were brought to the capital from Baltimore. Not connected with any of the nursing or relief agencies, she worked throughout the war as an independent, bringing medicines and supplies to the front lines. At Antietam her wagon followed the Union second corps onto the battlefield. A surgeon was killed while taking a drink from her and she even worked on one of the wounded, extracting a bullet from his cheek. Near the war’s close she was assigned by Lincoln, the duty of identifying missing soldiers. In this role she visited Andersonville and compiled a list of deceased prisoners. After returning to the U.S. from the Franco-Prussian war she founded the American branch and served as it’s president from 1882 to 1904. Under her leadership, the focus of the committee grew from warfare to include natural disasters.