Clara Barton
Nurse, Advocate
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Clara Barton was born in North Oxford, Massachusetts, in 1821. After starting her professional life as a teacher, she became one of the first women to work for the federal government as an employee of the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C.
When the Civil War began in 1861, Barton volunteered to help however she could. She provided nursing care to soldiers and opened the Office of Missing Soldiers to reunite more than 20,000 soldiers with their families after the war. Present at the battle of Antietem, Barton was moved by the suffering of the wounded soldiers she encountered there on both sides of the conflict. She decided to learn what she could about humanitarian efforts on behalf of solidiers.
In 1869, she traveled to Switzerland and learned about the international Red Cross movement which endeavored to provide neutral aid to soldiers injured in combat. Barton volunteered with the International Committee of the Red Cross during the Franco-Prussian War and eventually founded the American Red Cross in 1881.
Once the U.S. ratified the Geneva Convention of 1882, a congressional charter recognized the Red Cross's neutral services. After serving as president of the Red Cross for 23 years and retiring in 1904, Barton died in Glen Echo, Maryland, and 1912.
