Clara Barton

Clarissa “Clara” Harlow Barton is best known for being the founder of the American Red Cross and the National First Aid Society. Barton supported many of the nineteenth-century reform movements that affect our lives even today.

She was born on December 25, 1821, in North Oxford, Massachusetts, the youngest child of Stephen and Sarah Barton. Clara Barton started teaching when she was 18, and founded a school at her brother’s mill for the workers’ children when she was 24. In the 1840s and 50s, she supported the public school movement by teaching and establishing free schools. She was also a dedicated supporter of the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Rights Movement. Barton worked closely with Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony on these issues.

During the Civil War, Barton worked independently to give relief to the wounded in the Union Army at Cedar Mountain, Bull Run, Chantilly, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Hilton Head, the Wilderness, and Petersburg. She performed her work initially without government support or assistance. In 1864, her work was recognized and she was appointed Superintendent of Nurses for the Army of the James, a Union Army. After the War, she worked to locate missing soldiers and led the War Department in the effort to mark over 12,000 Union graves at Andersonville Prison in Georgia.

Barton went to Europe in 1869, where she became involved in the International Committee of the Red Cross, assisting with civilian relief during the Franco-Prussian War. With the experiences and knowledge she gained in Europe, Barton returned to the United States and worked diligently to create the American branch of the Red Cross, established on May 21, 1881. Barton was 60 years old when she became its first president, a position she held from 1882 to 1904. While presiding over the Red Cross, she realized that its services could be utilized during peacetime to relieve the needs of those affected by natural disasters and epidemics. Today, the Red Cross continues to carry out Barton's commitment to bringing relief wherever needed.

Barton retired from the American Red Cross at the age of 83, and established the National First Aid Society. The organization grew rapidly during the last seven years of her life, and its mission was later included in the mission of the American Red Cross.

Barton spent the last fifteen years of her life in Glen Echo, Maryland. She lived in a three-story, thirty-eight-room building, which also served as a dormitory for Red Cross volunteers, a warehouse for Red Cross supplies, and the first permanent headquarters of the American Red Cross. The National Park Service maintains the site, known as the Clara Barton National Historic Site.

“You must never think of anything except the need, and how to meet it.” - Clara Barton​