That most noted and beloved of humanitarians, Clara Barton, is of
Puritan ancestry, being born in Oxford, Massachusetts, in 1830. She
was the daughter of Captain Stephen and Sally Stone Barton, and was
educated at Clinton, New York. When still very young she founded a
seminary for girls at Elizabethtown, New Jersey. Later, she became
principal of the first public school in Bordentown, New Jersey,
resigned through sickness and was the first woman to hold a regular
clerical position under the government, afterward being appointed to
the patent office at Washington, District of Columbia. During the Civil
war she was instrumental in forming the famous sanitary commission
which did such magnificent work for the sick and wounded at Bull Run,
Antietam, Spottsylvania and many other battlefields of the war. When
the Andersonville prisoners were released they received timely aid
through her relief work, and by her earnest efforts the fate of over
thirty thousand missing men was ascertained by means of the bureau of
records which she organized at Washington. During the Franco-Prussian
war she and her assistants nursed the sick and wounded in Strasburg
and Metz. In the days of the Commune she entered Paris, distributing
food and clothing to the hungry and starving. On her return to the
United States in 1873, she started the successful movement to obtain
recognition of the projected Red Cross society from the government.
In 1882 the society was organized and she became its first president.
In that capacity she has superintended the work of giving help to
sufferers from the Michigan forest fires, the earthquake at Charleston,
floods on the Ohio and Mississippi, 1884; the Johnstown flood, the
Galveston disaster, 1900, etc. Wherever there has been a cry from the
sufferer, Clara Barton, often in the face of almost insurmountable
difficulties and constant danger, has ever responded to the call of
duty.