Clara Barton: A Story of the Red Cross

A teacher, nurse, suffragist, and humanitarian, Clarissa (Clara) Barton (1821–1912) is best known for founding the American Red Cross in 1881. Born in Massachusetts in 1821, Barton began her medical training as a young teenager, when she nursed a seriously ill brother for two years. After fifteen years as a schoolteacher, Barton moved to Washington, D.C., where she was employed as a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office. She was living in the nation’s capital when the Civil War began in 1861. Although she nursed a number of Union soldiers, it was for her efforts in bringing supplies to the troops that she earned the nickname “Angel of the Battlefield.” At the war’s end, Barton helped establish a national cemetery at Andersonville, Georgia, and ran the Office of Correspondence with Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army until 1869.

While traveling in Europe, Barton became interested in the relief efforts of the international Red Cross societies and volunteered her...