The Life of Clara Barton
Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born in 1821 in North Oxford, Massachusetts, the youngest of five children. From ages 17-23, she taught in several schools, before establishing her own school in North Oxford. Several years later, Barton moved to Washington, DC, where she worked as a clerk in the US Patent Office. At the outbreak of the Civil War, she served as an independent volunteer on the Union side, helping with nursing and feeding. Not connected with any of the nursing or relief agencies, she worked throughout the war bringing medicines and supplies to the front lines, where she earned her nickname "The Angel of the Battlefield." Clara Barton's poem " The Women Who Went to the Field" is a tribute to the courage and endurance of the Civil War nurses who came to the aid of wounded and dying soldiers on and off the battlefield.
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. According to federal historians who have now documented some of her work with the surprise discovery of records in a government attic, her missing soldier's operation tracked down 22,000 men from 1865 to 1868.
In 1869 she traveled to Europe, where she learned about the Treaty of Geneva, which provided relief for sick and wounded soldiers and the International Red Cross. She later joined the International Red Cross and served with that organization in the Franco-Prussian War. Returning to the United States in 1877, she focused on educating the public and garnering support for an American society of the Red Cross, including meeting with President Rutherford B. Hayes and enlisting the aid of friends to help publicize the organization.