How a Government Worker Discovered Clara Barton’s Missing Soldiers Office

By Matt Blitz, 11-13-15

On the day before Thanksgiving 1996, General Services Administration carpenter Richard Lyons was conducting a final review of a decrepit building at 437 Seventh Street, Northwest, that had recently fallen into government possession and was now set for demolition. Coming in from the cold rain, he entered the dusty old building alone. On the first floor (which was once a shoe store), he checked for infrastructure damage, trash, and whether anybody had made it their temporary home. Then, he moved to the second floor and did a similar sweep. He moved to third floor. “There were no lights… it was dark,” Lyons tells Washingtonian, “Then, I heard this noise, but saw nothing.” Lyons heard a noise again, so he walked back and forth, stopping at the window. “I was at the window and it felt like somebody tapped me on the shoulder… when I turned around, I spotted an envelope between the ceiling and the wall.”

He got out a ladder and reached for it. The envelope was addressed to a “Edward Shaw, Washington City.” Curious, he pulled himself through a small hole leading to the attic. That’s where he found an assortment of artifacts—utensils, clothing, Civil War-era newspapers, a bayonet and one small sign written in gold and black lettering. It read “Missing Soldiers. Office. 3rd. Story. Room 9. Miss Clara Barton.”

The sign Lyons found. Photograph courtesy the National Museum of Civil War Medicine.
Clara Barton was born into a military and abolitionist-leaning Massachusetts family in 1821. Her father was a militia captain and founder of the community’s Universalist church, one that held progressive views on abolition. At 18, she began her professional career as a teacher in Oxford, Massachusetts. In 1854, she moved to Washington to become a recording clerk at the United States Patent Office. She was so impressive, both in her skills and confidence, that she was paid the same salary as her male co-workers, which was nearly unheard of at the time. Unfortunately, the job only lasted three years: When Democrat James Buchanan became president, the vocal Republican and abolitionist was let go. When Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, she got hired again, but to the position of copyist—not nearly as prestigious or well-paying a job. When war broke out in 1861, Barton volunteered at the Washington Infirmary. As the conflict dragged on, more brutal than many had anticipated, Barton made her way to the front lines, determined to help those fighting for the cause she believed in.

Barton wasn’t a trained nurse, but her ability to organize supplies, help, and treatment was immensely needed during a war that injured and maimed thousands. She became a welcome and morale-boosting sight whenever she showed up at a Union hospital. Frequently written about in newspapers across the country, Barton became a well-known figure to Americans. Due to this and her proximity to soldiers, Barton received scores of letters from families asking whether their loved ones were alive or dead, and if dead where they were buried. Unable to answer every letter, she hired several assistants and ordered stationery. She named her new mobile venture “The Office of Correspondence with the Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army.”

In late 1864, with the war finally winding down, Barton moved back to the nation’s capital to gather supplies. It was at this time that Edward Shaw, a friend and co-worker from the patent office, offered Barton a chance to move into his boarding house at 488 1/2 7th Street—437 7th Street today. She took him up on it and also convinced him to rent her half of the third floor for an office. Clara Barton’s Missing Soldiers Office was born.

Over a period of about four years, Barton and her staff handled over 60,000 pieces of correspondence, helping to give peace of mind to a country scarred by war. She placed ads in newspapers, wrote letters to her military contacts, and urged soldiers to tell her about final resting places of their fellow comrades. She went on to establish the American Red Cross 12 years later.
After his discovery, Richard Lyons became so infatuated with Barton and the Missing Soldiers Office story that he spent a year researching and reading everything he could. “I would go home, walk the dog, then go to the Library of Congress and stayed there until closing time every night,” says Lyons. With the help of the National Park Service, the GSA, and the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, many of the found artifacts have been archived–including a blouse with a hole in its sleeve.

“While doing research, I read that (Barton) was at Antietam giving soldiers water,” Lyons says. “She wrote in her diary that a bullet went through her sleeve and hit a soldier in the head, killing him … under that she wrote, ‘I never bothered to mend it.'” Lyons believes it’s the same blouse–“Why else would a hole like that be in a sleeve?” he says.

Today, the National Museum of Civil War Medicine operates the DC building’s first and third floor as a museum and monument to the achievements, heroism, and willpower of Clara Barton. Lyons still volunteers there on occasion, giving tours and telling people about the historic trove he found. When asked if he thought, perhaps, it was the spirit of Clara Barton that lightly tapped him on the shoulder that cold, rainy November night nearly two decades ago, Lyons responds,“I don’t know what it was, but it felt real to me.”

From: washingtonian.com

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Clara Barton and The Red Cross: A History of this Remarkable International Movement in the Interest of Humanity

From: library.uthscsa.edu

Clarissa Harlow Barton was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, on the 25th of December in 1821. She was the youngest of six children, and she took a keen interest in education early in her life. When she was a toddler, she was sent to school with one of her older brothers, where she developed a love for reading. When she was ten, her brother fell off the roof of their barn and had to undergo surgery. Clara was dedicated to nursing him back to good health. This event sparked her passion and love for healing others, which would eventually lead to the wonderful legacy she left behind.

Clara decided to become a teacher at the age of fifteen and worked as an educator for several years; eventually, she opened a public school in Bordentown, New Jersey, in 1853. A year after opening the school, Clara moved to Washington, D.C. and worked at the Patent Office. Many people believe that she was perhaps the first woman in the United States to hold a government job. In the early 1860s when the Civil War broke out, Barton was one of the first volunteers at the local infirmary caring for the wounded soldiers. She went on to serve the injured soldiers on the field. She collected supplies and distributed them to the Union Army. She cared for the soldiers during combat in Fredericksburg, Virginia, as well as Antietam. Many soldiers addressed her as the “Angel of the Battlefield.”

In 1869 after the Civil War had ended, Clara visited Geneva, Switzerland, and was introduced to the Red Cross organization. While on her trip, she was asked to be the representative for the American Branch. Upon returning to the United States, she began to lobby to gain some recognition for the Red Cross. In 1881, the American Red Cross Society was founded with Barton serving as President until 1904. After leaving the Red Cross, Clara remained devoted to her philanthropic passion and delivered speeches and lectures concerning public health and health interventions. She also wrote many literary pieces that focused on public health, her experiences as a nurse, and the importance of health on a global spectrum. Barton died in Glen Echo, Maryland, on April 12, 1912.

The P.I. Nixon Medical Historical Library owns a copy of The Red Cross: A History of this Remarkable International Movement in the Interest of Humanity, written by Clara Barton and published in the year 1898.

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A Poem By Clara Barton, The Angel of the Battlefield

From: arlingtoncemetery.net

During the Civil War (or the War Between the States or the War of the Northern Aggression -- whichever the wounded or the starving people called it), Clara Barton organized and distributed supplies to the front lines and nursed those in need, no matter which side of the Mason-Dixon line they came from. She went into the Fort Wagner battle with the Massachusetts 54th Regiment, an African American unit, and cared for the wounded, according to American University historian Ed Smith.

For her bravery and compassion, she was called "Angel of the Battlefield."

At war's end, Barton took up an effort vital to families whose friends and relatives had seemed to vanish in the gunfire. Barton, never one to tend to just knitting, set up her apartment and office at the Seventh Street address. For four years, the heroine sent out posters, with lists of people whose friends and family were searching for soldier friends and relatives, alive or dead. Her efforts found 22,000 soldiers, according to Scott.

Barton joined with Frederick Douglass in his battle for African American rights and then Susan B. Anthony in the suffrage movement. In 1869 she went to Europe during the Franco-Prussian conflict, and, true to her passion to help, worked with the International Red Cross. The German emperor awarded her the Iron Cross of Merit.

Back in Washington, she organized the American Red Cross and, of course, became its first president, and for 23 years directed its work. At 79, she went to Galveston, Tex., to help the people suffering from floods there. She retired at 82, and lived at Glen Echo, until her death at 91 in 1921.

A poem by Barton explains her life's work:

Because in their hearts God had planted the seed
Of pity for women, and help for its needs;
They saw, in high purpose, a duty to do,
And the armor of right broke the barriers through.
Uninvited, unaided, unsanctioned ofttimes
With pass, or without it, they pressed on the lines
They would bind on their "brassards" and march to the fray.
And the man liveth not who could say them nay;
They would stand with you now, as they stood with you then
The nurses, consolers, and saviours of men.

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The Women Who Went To The Field: A Poem By Clara Barton

From nps.gov

The women who went to the field, you say,
The women who went to the field; and pray
What did they go for? Just to be in the way!--
They'd not know the difference betwixt work and play,
What did they know about war anyway?
What could they do? of what use could they be?
They would scream at the sight of a gun, don't you see?
Just fancy them round where the bugle notes play,
And the long roll is bidding us on to the fray.
Imagine their skirts 'mong artillery wheels,
And watch for their flutter as they flee 'cross the fields
When the charge is rammed home and the fire belches hot;
They never will wait for the answering shot.
They would faint at the first drop of blood, in their sight.
What fun for us boys, -- (ere we enter the fight;)
They might pick some lint, and tear up some sheets,
And make us some jellies, and send on their sweets,
And knit some soft socks for Uncle Sam's shoes,
And write us some letters, and tell us the news.
And thus it was settled by common consent,
That husbands, or brothers, or whoever went,
That the place for the women was in their own homes,
There to patiently wait until victory comes.
But later, it chanced, just how no one knew,
That the lines slipped a bit, and some began to crowd through;
And they went, where did they go? Ah; where did they not?
Show us the battle, the field, or the spot
Where the groans of the wounded rang out on the air
That her ear caught it not, and her hand was not there,
Who wiped the death sweat from the cold clammy brow,
And sent home the message; -"'T is well with him now"?
Who watched in the tents, whilst the fever fires burned,
And the pain-tossing limbs in agony turned,
And wet the parched tongue, calmed delirium's strife
Till the dying lips murmured, "My Mother," "My Wife"!
And who were they all? They were many, my men:
Their record was kept by no tabular pen:
They exist in traditions from father to son.
Who recalls, in dim memory, now here and there one.
A few names were writ, and by chance live to-day;
But's a perishing record fast fading away.
Of those we recall, there are scarcely a score,
Dix, Dame, Bickerdyke,--Edson, Harvey, and Moore,
Fales, Wittenmyer, Gilson, Safford and Lee,
And poor Cutter dead in the sands of the sea;
And Frances D. Gage, our "Aunt Fanny" of old,
Whose voice rang for freedom when freedom was sold.
And Husband, and Etheridge, and Harlan and Case,
Livermore, Alcott, Hancock, and Chase,
And Turner, and Hawley, and Potter, and Hall.
Ah! The list grows apace, as they come at the call:
Did these women quail at the sight of a gun?
Will some soldier tell us of one he saw run?
Will he glance at the boats on the great western flood,
At Pittsburgh and Shiloh, did they faint at the blood?
And the brave wife of Grant stood there with them then,
And her calm, stately presence gave strength to his men.
And Marie of Logan; she went with them too;
A bride, scarcely more than a sweetheart, tis true.
Her young cheek grows pale when the bold troopers ride.
Where the "Black Eagle" soars, she is close at his side,
She staunches his blood, cools the fever-burnt breath,
And the wave of her hand stays the Angel of Death;
She nurses him back, and restores once again
To both army and state the brave leader of men.
She has smoothed his black plumes and laid them to sleep,
Whilst the angels above them their high vigils keep:
And she sits here alone, with the snow on her brow
Your cheers for her comrades! Three cheers for her now.
And these were the women who went to the war:
The women of question; what did they go for?
Because in their hearts God had planted the seed
Of pity for woe, and help for its need;
They saw, in high purpose, a duty to do,
And the armor of right broke the barriers through.
Uninvited, unaided, unsanctioned oft times,
With pass, or without it, they pressed on the lines;
They pressed, they implored, till they ran the lines through,
And this was the "running" the men saw them do.
Twas a hampered work, its worth largely lost;
Twas hindrance, and pain, and effort, and cost:
But through these came knowledge, knowledge is power.
And never again in the deadliest hour
Of war or of peace, shall we be so beset
To accomplish the purpose our spirits have met.
And what would they do if war came again?
The scarlet cross floats where all was blank then.
They would bind on their "brassards" and march to the fray,
And the man liveth not who could say to them nay;
They would stand with you now, as they stood with you then,
The nurses, consolers, and saviors of men.

"The Women Who Went to the Field" was written by Clara Barton. She read the poem during a reception on November 18, 1892 at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D. C. for the Potomac Relief Corps, a unit of the National Woman's Relief Corps.

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Clara Barton: American Red Cross Founder

From: womensmemorial.org

The suffering of wounded and sick soldiers moved Clarissa Harlowe Barton, who later became famous as Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, to become involved in war relief work. At the start of the war, Barton was a 39-year-old spinster, one of a small number of women working full time as a copyist in the US Patent Office in Washington, DC. When Barton learned that in many cases the wounded suffered because military hospitals were short of supplies, she used her own money to purchase pickled vegetables and homemade jellies to supplement the standard military diet of hardtack and salt pork. She also collected bandages, salves, medicine, bed sheets and even tobacco and whisky to help boost the soldiers’ morale.

Because it wasn’t proper for a single lady to visit Army camps and hospitals unescorted, Clara took her 50-year-old married sister, Sally Vassall, with her on her visits to local military hospitals. But Clara wanted to do more; she wanted to nurse soldiers who fell on the battlefields. For months, however, her fear that she would shame her family prevented her from trying to get to the front. Finally, Clara’s 80-year old father, a veteran of the War of 1812, freed his daughter of her worries. On his deathbed, he instructed her to go and do what she could to help the wounded. “The soldiers will know you are a decent woman as soon as they lay eyes on you,” he said.

Next, Clara had to find an Army sponsor, an officer willing to sign the military passes she would need to travel to the battlefield. Persistently, she visited numerous officers until she finally spoke with COL Daniel H. Rucker, head of the Quartermaster Depot in Washington, DC. When Clara told him that she had collected “three warehouses of supplies,” Rucker wrote her a pass allowing her to take the supplies she had collected to the front at Fredericksburg, VA. She reached Fredericksburg after the battle, but was able to assuage much suffering by passing out food, medicine and bedding supplies. After that, Barton never again had trouble getting a military pass.

During the Battle of Antietam, Barton worked in a surgery ward set up in a farmhouse close to the front lines. The farmhouse was under fire much of the time. Confederate shells burst overhead, crashed into the surrounding trees and exploded in the nearby barn and outbuildings. Stray bullets peppered the walls of the farmhouse. One of these bullets ripped through the sleeve of Barton’s dress. The farmhouse floor shook so much that the operating tables jarred and rolled while Barton and the doctor struggled to keep their patients on them. Barton’s first battle did nothing to discourage her; she continued to nurse at the battles of Marye’s Heights, the Wilderness Campaign, Hilton Head and Battery Wagner. After the war, Clara Barton worked to establish the American wing of the International Red Cross.

The information found in this article comes from "A Women of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War" by Stephen B. Oates published in New York, by The Free Press in 1994.

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Clara Barton Surmounts The Faithlessness Of Union Officers

From: civilwarhome.com

It was not only doctors and nurses who were, at times, incompetent but army officers as well. At least so Clara Barton often thought. She was a strong-minded woman, and a bit inclined to think the worst of her superiors and associates. When the war broke out Miss Barton was working in the patent Office in Washington. Deeply moved by the distress of the soldiers after First Bull Run she wrote a letter to the Worcester (Massachusetts) Spy asking for food, clothing, and bandages for the soldiers. Provisions poured in-and she had found her mission. Never formally associated either with the Sanitary Commission or, except for a brief interlude, with the army, she conducted something of a one-woman relief organization. She carried on her beneficent activities with the Army of the Potomac, the Army of the James, around Charleston, and in and around Washington. After the war she was the moving spirit in the establishment of the American Red Cross, and for over tzventy years its director.

This excerpt comes from her war diary.

        No one has forgotten the heart-sickness which spread over the entire country as the busy wires flashed the dire tidings of the terrible destitution and suffering of the wounded of the Wilderness whom I attended as they lay in Fredericksburg. But you may never have known how many hundredfold of these ills were augmented by the conduct of improper, heartless, unfaithful officers in the immediate command of the city and upon whose actions and indecisions depended entirely the care, food, shelter, comfort, and lives of that whole city of wounded men. One of the highest officers there has since been convicted a traitor. And another, a little dapper captain quartered with the owners of one of the finest mansions in the town, boasted that he had changed his opinion since entering the city the day before; that it was in fact a pretty hard thing for refined people like the people of Fredericksburg to be compelled to open their homes and admit these dirty, lousy, common soldiers," and that he was not going to compel it.

        This I heard him say, and waited until I saw him make his words good, till I saw, crowded into one old sunken hotel, lying helpless upon its bare, wet, bloody floors, five hundred fainting men hold up their cold, bloodless, dingy hands, as I passed, and beg me in Heaven's name for a cracker to keep them from starving (and I had none); or to give them a cup that they might have something to drink water from, if they could get it (and I had no cup and could get none); till I saw two hundred six-mule army wagons in a line, ranged down the street to headquarters, and reaching so far out on the Wilderness road that I never found the end of it; every wagon crowded with wounded men, stopped, standing in the rain and mud, wrenched back and forth by the restless, hungry animals all night from four o'clock in the afternoon till eight next morning and how much longer I, know not. The dark spot in the mud under many a wagon, told only too plainly where some Poo fellow's life had dripped out in those dreadful hours.

        I remembered one man who would set it right, if he knew it, who possessed the power and who would believe me if I told him I commanded immediate conveyance back to Belle Plain. With difficulty I obtained it, and four stout horses with a light army wagon took me ten miles at an unbroken gallop, through field and swamp and stumps and mud to Belle Plain and a steam tug at once to Washington. Landing at dusk I sent for Henry Wilson, chairman of the Military Committee of the Senate. A messenger brought him at eight, saddened and appalled like every other patriot in that fearful hour, at the weight of woe under which the Nation staggered, groaned, and wept.

        He listened to the story of suffering and faithlessness, and hurried from my presence, with lips compressed and face like ashes. At ten he stood in the War Department. They could not credit his report. He must have been deceived by some frightened villain. No official report of unusual suffering had reached them. Nothing had been called for by the military authorities commanding Fredericksburg.

        Mr. Wilson assured them that the officers in trust there were not to be relied upon. They were faithless, overcome by the blandishments of the wily inhabitants. Still the Department doubted. It was then that he proved that my confidence in his firmness was not misplaced, as, facing his doubters he replies: "One of two things will have to be done-either you will send some one to-night with the power to investigate and correct the abuses of our wounded men at Fredericksburg, or the Senate will send some one tomorrow."

        This threat recalled their scattered senses.

        At two o'clock in the morning the Quartermastcr-General and staff galloped to the 6th Street wharf under orders; at ten they were in Fredericksburg. At noon the wounded men were fed from the food of the city and the houses were opened to the "dirty, lousy soldiers" of the Union Army.

        Both railroad and canal were opened. In three days I returned with carloads of supplies.

        No more jolting in army wagons! And every man who left Fredericksburg by boat or by car owes it to the firm decision of one man that his grating bones were not dragged ten miles across the country or left to bleach -in the sands of that city.

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Civil War Medical Museum To Manage Missing Soldiers Office, National Museum of Civil War Medicine, Press Release. 12-30-10

From: civilwarlibrarian.blogspot.com

The National Museum of Civil War Medicine (NMCWM) will open the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum this year at 437 7th St. NW, Washington. The General Services Administration (GSA), which owns the building, chose the Frederick, Md., non-profit museum whose mission is preserving and researching the legacy of Civil War medicine, to operate the museum.

Barton lived in the third-floor rooms during and immediately after the war. Her living quarters and office were there until 1867. During the war supplies for her nursing work were stored in these rooms. In 1865 Barton hired staff and opened the Office of Correspondence with the Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army.

The office responded to more than 63,000 letters seeking information about soldiers and published lists of missing men. The fate of more than 22,000 soldiers had been learned by the time the office closed in 1867. The doors to the apartment were closed in 1875. The suite of rooms was discovered in 1997 as GSA workers were preparing the building for demolition.

In announcing the new site NMCWM Executive Director George Wunderlich said, “What she did in nursing is incredibly important and we don’t want to diminish that at all. But to say that Clara Barton is a nurse is a gross understatement of her importance. The fact is that she was a relief organizer at a time when women didn’t do that.”

He said, “The story of the rediscovery of the building as well as the story of Barton’s life while she lived there will be the essence of the visitor experience at the museum.” Barton’s words will be used in audio scripts and exhibit labels. Artifacts, images and sounds will enhance the interpretation.

“The overarching theme for the visitor experience will be the sensation of discovering a place, and through the place a remarkable person, and through the person the values that shaped her life and work,” Wunderlich said. The National Museum of Civil War Medicine operates out of a downtown Frederick building with nearly 7,000 square feet of exhibit space.

Its Pry House Field Hospital Museum on the grounds of Antietam National Battlefield, where Dr. Jonathan Letterman devised his system of battlefield medicine, is interpreted as a house museum. Its large bank barn was a field hospital that treated more than 400 men after the battle.

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Clara Barton (1821-1912)

From: uab.edu

In her hometown of Oxford, Massachusetts, Clara Barton began serving humanity early in life when she set up a school for the children of her father’s sawmill workers in 1836. She was only fifteen years of age (Library of North American Biographies). Departing from this position in 1851 to enhance her education, Barton attended school at the Liberal Institute of Clinton, NY for one year. Thereafter, she found herself teaching again in Bordentown, NJ from 1852 to 1854. Clara’s school in Bordentown was one of New Jersey’s first free, public schools, and its great success and growth in such a short period of time caused the local school board to hire a male principal to supervise. This action, however, upset Clara, prompting her to leave her job and teaching career behind. Her departure has been described as "a tactful, characteristic display of independence" (American Reformers). But soon, with the help of her congressman, Barton secured a job with the Patent Office in Washington in 1854, becoming the first regularly appointed female civil servant (Notable American Women). These actions from Clara’s early years show a dedication to work and a pioneering spirit.

However, Barton’s humanitarian pursuits truly began when the Civil War broke out. First she came to the aid of Union soldiers who found themselves in Washington after being attacked at Baltimore. Many were wounded and without supplies, and so Clara placed advertisements in the newspaper for medicines, bandages, food and clothing donations. Initially she used her own rooms to store the abundant contributions. Soon her service expanded and she rented a warehouse to keep supplies, which she insisted upon personally delivering to the battlefields. The War Department at first objected to a female presence on the field, but her persistence won them over, and she eventually secured army carts and mules to aid in her distribution. Barton also prepared meals for the soldiers and nursed the sick and wounded, earning the name “Angel of the Battlefield”. Only for a brief time in 1864 was she affiliated with the army in any official capacity. During this year she was head nurse with the Army of the James under General Benjamin Butler (American Reformers). Otherwise, Clara preferred to remain independent of the official United States Sanitary Commission and Dorothea Dix’s division of nurses (Notable American Women).

At the war’s end, Clara set up a missing soldier’s bureau with the approval of President Lincoln. Then from 1866 to 1868, she traveled around the northern and western parts of the United States speaking about her war experiences. In 1869, Clara went to Europe for health-related reasons and there became familiar with the International Committee of the Red Cross. This organization was formed during a convention in Geneva in 1863 and became official when the Geneva Treaty was ratified by eleven European countries in 1864. These countries agreed that in future wars, the wounded, ambulances and sanitary personnel would be neutral. Clara Barton believed strongly in the ideals of the Red Cross and joined them in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) relief effort (American Reformers; Notable American Women). In 1877, she began a five-year campaign to initiate an American Red Cross. Some Americans clung to the Monroe Doctrine, a policy that said the United States should stay out of foreign affairs. And also, there was a general belief amongst the American people that their country would not face a war on their own ground again (Library of North American Biographies). However, Barton overcame these obstacles by appealing to the American need for peacetime disaster relief. Not only did her campaign result in the establishment of the American Red Cross in 1881, it also convinced President Chester A. Arthur to ratify the Geneva Treaty in 1882. Her suggestion for peacetime relief, known as the “American Amendment,” was adopted by the international organization. Clara Barton became the first president of the American Red Cross, a position she held until 1904.

A copy of Barton’s important book, The Red Cross; a history of this remarkable international movement in the interest of humanity, published in 1898, is held at the Reynolds-Finley Historical Library. The story recounts the establishment of the organization in Europe and its adoption by the United States. It also gives detailed accounts of specific early American relief efforts, during the Michigan forest fires, the Mississippi and Ohio River floods, the Texas Famine, the Johnstown Flood, the Russian Famine, the Spanish-American War, and several others. In 1899, this book was reprinted under the title The Red Cross in Peace and War, and the Reynolds-Finley Library also has a copy of this book.

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Clara Barton: Heroine of Nursing and Record Keeping

Excerpted from: blog.tavbooks.com

“We have captured one fort—Gregg—and one charnel house—Wagner—and we have built one cemetery, Morris Island. The thousand little sandhills that in the pale moonlight are a thousand headstones, and the restless ocean waves that roll and breakup on the whitened beach sing an eternal requiem to all the toll-worn gallant dead who sleep beside.”
-Clara Barton, Morris Island

Born in Massachusetts in 1821, Clara Barton grew up to be one of the most distinguished nurses in the United States. Perhaps best known for founding the American Red Cross, Barton also played a pivotal role during the Civil War—not only as a nurse, but also as a record keeper.

Barton first came to Washington, DC in 1854, where she took a position at the US Patent Office. She worked there for three years, until her abolitionist views made her to controversial and she returned to New England. But 1861 saw her back in the capitol, and when the Civil War broke out Barton was one of the first volunteers to arrive at the Washington Infirmary.

After Barton’s father died, she left the city hospital to care for soldiers in the field. What she found here reflected the scene in battlefields all over the country. There was a dizzying shortage of medical supplies, and Barton purchased supplies with donations and her own money. (Congress would later reimburse her for these expenses.)

Barton also quickly discovered what would turn into one of the greatest challenges in the nation’s recovery: there were no processes for documenting the wounded, the dead, the buried; no protocol for notifying families if a loved one had been wounded or killed. Barton immediately set about collecting as much information as possible. She would post lists of the missing and solicit input directly from the soldiers.

The Nation Faces a New Challenge

It became readily apparent that the isolated efforts of individuals like Whitman and Barton would not be enough. In March 1865, Abraham Lincoln appointed Barton General Correspondent for the Friends of Paroled Prisoners. Her mission was to respond to inquiries from family members who were searching for loved ones. To do this, Barton sifted through all the prison rolls, hospital records, and casualty lists she could get her hands on. These documents weren’t always accurate.

Take, for instance, the case of John Shuman. He joined the Union Army in August 1862, but died of dysentery in August 1863. Shuman left behind an extensive correspondence with his family, which offers a fascinating glimpse into Civil War soldiers’ daily lives. Though the family name appears to be “Shuman” in the letters, the local census lists the family as “Shurman.” Furthermore the office responsible for removing John’s remains identified him as Shuman, but the grave marker and index at the cemetery list him as “Sherman.” The history of John’s infantry, published in 1895, calls him “John Shewman.”

Many soldiers in the war were not so lucky; they were not identified. Whitman and Barton again led the charge, independently insisting on the identification and marking of soldiers’ graves wherever they could be tracked down. Eventually it was thanks to their efforts that our national cemetery system was developed and implemented.

Barton would go on to distinguish herself as the founder of the American Red Cross and a true pioneer in the field of nursing. But her contributions during the Civil War were an equally significant accomplishment.

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Women's Changing Roles During the Civil War

By Kate Coleman, September 16, 2002

There were 23,110 casualties at the battle of Antietam.

The Civil War - skirmishes, battles and disease - took the lives of more than 610,000 Union and Confederate soldiers.

Beyond the mind-numbing numbers are the personal stories of families and communities affected by the fighting. What effect did the war have on women - the wives, the mothers, the sisters, the friends of those soldiers?

The war's impact on some women of the period is well-known.

Clara Barton was called the "angel of the battlefield" by a surgeon at Antietam.

The Massachusetts native had become a teacher at the age of 18, in an era when most teachers were male. In 1852, she established the first free public school in New Jersey and moved to Washington, D.C., in 1854. She was one of very few women who worked for the federal government, earning $1,400 a year as a clerk - the same salary as the men in her office. Because the Secretary of the Interior was opposed to women working in government offices, her job was reduced to copyist; her pay to 10 cents per 100 words copied, according to information on the Clara Barton National Historic Site Web site at Clara Barton National Historic Site (U.S. National Park Service)

From: articles.herald-mail.com

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Clara Barton: Angel of the Battlefield

From: totalgettysburg.com

Shortly after the start of the American Civil War, Clara Barton, a clerk for the U.S. Patent Office tended to wounded Union soldiers in Washington. She quickly realized the need to get supplies to wounded soldiers on the battlefield and established a system of helping to meet this need. Clara often traveled to the front with army personnel to treat wounded soldiers early on in the war despite lack of support for her efforts.

By the time the conflict broke out, women were not accepted in Civil War hospitals, camps and battlefields and those women offering their assistance faced staunch resistance. Clara persisted and lobbied with U.S. army officials for permission to bring her own medical supplies to the front to treat the wounded and dying.

In August, 1862 Clara received the permission she was looking for and served on the front lines at some of the bloodiest battles for the remainder of the war. Clara quickly became one of the highly-regarded nurses of the Civil War and was appropriately named “The Angel of the Battlefield” for helping thousands of wounded men over the course of the war.

Clara Barton, Angel of the Battlefield, Nurses of the Civil WarIn 1865, President Lincoln appointed Clara in charge of locating missing Union soldiers. Right around this time, a Union solider named Dorence Atwater located Clara and brought some encouraging information. He had been held prisoner at the notorious Andersonville prisoner camp and had copied a list of 13,000 names of those who had died in the camp. Dorence was able to smuggle the names out of the camp when the prisoners were released and he intended on publishing the names so the families would know the fate of their loved ones.

He and Clara made a trip to Andersonville GA following the war, and after honoring the dead, they proceeded to have all the names published in newspapers and sent letters to soldiers’ families. This list would thereafter be known as “The Atwater List”.

Clara toured the country speaking of her wartime experiences as a nurse and her accounts brought great clarity to the important role of Civil War nurses. This helped the women's suffrage greatly in this country and paved the way for women to be viewed as skilled workers in the medical profession.

Perhaps Clara Barton’s largest contribution was to start an American chapter of the International Committee of the Red Cross. After visiting France and being exposed to this organization and their efforts, she lobbied to start a similar organization in the U.S. After seven tireless years of building support for this endeavor, the American Red Cross was founded on May 21, 1881. Barton carried out her duties as acting president with great success before retiring in 1904 at the age of 83. Clara Barton died on April 12, 1912 in Glen Echo, Maryland surrounded by friends.

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Nurses and Clara Barton

by Brooke C. Stoddard and Daniel P. Murphy, Ph.D.

Clara Barton is well known as the founder of the American Red Cross, but it was her remarkable humanitarian efforts during the Civil War that established her reputation as the “Angel of the Battlefield.” She was also an ardent feminist, the first female diplomat, and an important advocate of health and education reform and civil rights.

Barton worked as a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C., where she saw the first casualties of the Civil War. She observed the inadequate medical care and noted that the wounded frequently went without sufficient food or clothing. Working independently of other relief agencies, Barton started lobbying to change the horrific conditions of battlefield medicine.

In July 1862, Barton received permission from the U.S. surgeon general to take medical supplies directly to the front lines and field hospitals. She risked her life to help the soldiers on the front at important battles such as Cedar Creek, Second Manassas, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. She also provided medical aid during the Carolinas campaign and in Virginia during Grant's 1864 offensives, where she was granted an official position with the Army of the James under the command of General Benjamin Butler.

As the war began to wind down, Barton was given a nearly overwhelming task by President Lincoln. He asked her to oversee the search for missing and captured Union soldiers, compile lists of the sick and wounded, and identify the Union dead buried in mass graves at Andersonville prison and elsewhere. The endeavor took Barton four long years to complete, but her efforts went a long way toward ensuring that Union soldiers who died on the battlefield and in prison were given decent burials and, more importantly, were remembered for their sacrifice.

Clara Barton was not the only woman who made tremendous sacrifices for the men who served in uniform. Women were by and large denied the opportunity of attending medical school, but thousands volunteered for medical service during the war. Union records show that approximately 4,000 women served as nurses in Union hospitals. Three thousand of these were recruited by Dorothea Dix, who volunteered for the Union in 1861 at the age of fifty-nine. She had worked before the war improving conditions for prisoners and the mentally ill. She was placed in charge of all female nurses for the Union and served in that capacity throughout the war at no salary. The number of Southern women who acted as nurses in Confederate hospitals is unknown but believed to be as high as that for the Union.

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What Would Clara Barton Bring?

From nps.gov

People call me a nurse – I scarcely know why. There were no nurses then. Trained nurses were not known. My work was, and chiefly has been to get timely supplies to those needing. It has taught me the value of Things. They have lost all. They want food, clothing, shelter, medicines, and a few calm practical persons to administer them. This seems to have been my work.
- Clara Barton, excerpt from interview published on January 10, 1908, in the New York Sun

During the Civil War, Clara Barton collected and distributed supplies (food, bedding, clothes, personal items, etc.) in hospitals and on the battlefield for both sides. She wanted to give comfort and relief to men who were fighting for their country. All of these things were distributed by wagon or train to hospitals or battlefields. Clara Barton would go along to organize and distribute the supplies and aid wounded soldiers.
Below is a list of items she brought to the battlefield.

Civil War Supply Shopping List:
1. bread
2. pies
3. canned fruits
4. pickled vegetables
5. jelly
6. prepared soups
7. meal
8. bandages
9. salves
10. combs
11. thread
12. buttons
13. thimbles
14. string
15. sewing kits
16. soap
17. clean shirts
18. handkerchiefs
19. sheets
20. blankets
21. oil and candle lanterns

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