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Clara Barton is known as the founder of the American Red Cross and it's first President. Barton worked her entire life on improving disaster and war relief.
Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born December 25th, 1821 in North Oxford, Massachusetts. The youngest by a decade of Captain Stephen and Sarah Barton's five children (2 brothers and 2 sisters), she grew up decidedly tom-boyish, preferring outdoor activities to the indoor pastimes of respectable young ladies. Adored by her family, her father would tell her stories of his experiences fighting the Indians while her brothers taught her horseback riding. Clara was painfully shy, to the point that her parents worried it would inhibit her, but she developed a pattern of overcoming her shyness when circumstances demanded it. The first hint of her future endeavors is said to have occurred when her brother became ill when she was still young. Clara is said to have learned how to administer his medicines, even the leeches, and did so for 2 years.
Clara excelled in school, no doubt due to the preparation she received at home as a child from her brothers and sisters. At 17 she became a teacher in Massachusetts's District 9 in Worcester Count and spent the next 6 years teaching at several schools until settling at her own school in North Oxford. At 29 Clara entered the advanced school for female teachers the Liberal Institute in Clinton New York. After a year at Clinton she took a teaching position in New Jersey, where she later opened a free school that grew to 600 students. The school board refused to make Barton the head of the school and hired a man instead, so she left New Jersey and moved to Washington DC where she worked as a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office. In 1861 the 6th Massachusetts Regiment arrived in Washington DC after the Baltimore Riots. Barton organized a relief program for the soldiers who were tired and wounded which started her down the path that would eventually define her life.
Barton resigned from the Patent Office to work as a volunteer, distributing bandages, socks, and other goods to wounded soldiers. Seeing that the Army was ill prepared for the providing medical supplies to battle fields, Barton lobbied the army bureaucracy for the right to bring her own medical supplies. At first she had little success, but finally, with the help of U.S. Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, she was permitted to bring her supplies to battlefields.
The civil was saw some of the bloodiest battlefields in history, and to those battle fields went Clarissa Barton, medical supplies in hand, to bring relief and comfort to the wounded and dying. Battlefields such as Cedar Mountain, Va; Second Manassas, Va; Antietam Md.; and Fredericksburg Va were all visited by Barton who brought lanterns, bandages, clothing food and supplies, often while herself in harms way. By 1864 Barton was named "lady in charge" of the hospitals at the front along the James River. In 1865 President Lincoln placed Barton in charge of the search for missing men of the Union Army. She helped identify 13,000 unknown Union dead from the prisoner of war camp at Andersonville, Georgia. Barton published lists of names in newspapers and exchanged letters with veterans and soldier's families.
After several years in this post, Barton travelled to Europe to relax, but with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, her conscience compelled her to assist relieve the hardship brought to many French civilians. As part of the relief effort, she became impressed with a new organization created in 1864 called the Red Cross. The red cross was chartered to provide humane services to all victims during wartime under a flag of neutrality.
Returning to the US, Barton began a crusade to launch an American Chapter of the Red Cross. President James Garfield sanctioned the founding of the American Red Cross, with an expanded role beyond caring for the wounded on battlefields. This role included assisting in the aftermath of natural disasters. Barton became the first President of the American Red Cross, which was officially founded in 1881, in Dansville, N.Y. Barton opened the first international American Red Cross headquarters in Beijing, China in 1896. She also worked in hospitals in Cuba in 1898 at seventy seven. Barton retired from president of the Red Cross in 1904 at 83, but not before she had turned it into a powerful force for good.
Clarissa Barton died on April 12th 1912 in Glen Echo, Maryland.
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Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Barton
http://www.civilwarhome.com/bartonbio.htm
http://americancivilwar.com/women/cb.html
http://www.incwell.com/Biographies/Barton.html
http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/clarabarton.html
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