HER PARENTAGE AND INFANCY
Captain Stephen Barton won his military title by that system of
_post-bellum_ promotion familiar in all American communities. He
was a non-commissioned officer in the wars against the Indians. He was
nineteen when he enlisted, and marched on foot with his troop from
Boston to Philadelphia, which at that time was the Nation’s capital.
The main army was then at Detroit under command of General Wayne, whom
the soldiers lovingly knew as “Mad Anthony.” William Henry Harrison
and Richard M. Johnson, later President and Vice-President of the
United States, were then lieutenants, and Stephen Barton fought side
by side with them. He was present when Tecumseh was slain, and at the
signing of the treaty of peace which followed. His military service
extended over three years. At the close of the war he marched home
on foot through northern Ohio and central New York. He and the other
officers were greatly charmed by the Genesee and Mohawk valleys, and
he purchased land somewhere in the vicinity of Rochester. He had some
thought of establishing a home in that remote region, but it was so far
distant from civilization that he sold his New York land and made his
home in Oxford.
In 1796, Stephen Barton returned from the Indian War. He was then
twenty-two years of age. Eight years later he married Sarah Stone, who
was only seventeen. They established their home west of Oxford, near
Charlton, and later removed to the farm where Clara Barton was born.
[Illustration: MOTHER AND FATHER OF CLARA BARTON]
It was a modest home, and Stephen Barton was a hardworking man, though
a man of influence in the community. He served often as moderator of
town meetings and as selectman for the town. He served also as a member
of the Legislature. But he wrought with his own hands in the tillage of
his farm, and in the construction of most of the articles of furniture
in his home, including the cradle in which his children were rocked.
[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF CLARA BARTON]
Stephen Barton combined a military spirit with a gentle disposition
and a broad spirit of philanthropy. Sarah Stone was a woman of great
decision of character, and a quick temper. She was a housewife of
the good old New England sort, looking well to the ways of her
household and eating not the bread of idleness. From her father Clara
Barton inherited those humanitarian tendencies which became notably
characteristic, and from her mother she derived a strong will which
achieved results almost regardless of opposition. Her mother’s hot
temper found its restraint in her through the inherited influence of
her father’s poise and benignity. Of him she wrote:
His military habits and tastes never left him. Those were also strong
political days--Andrew Jackson Days--and very naturally my father
became my instructor in military and political lore. I listened
breathlessly to his war stories. Illustrations were called for and
we made battles and fought them. Every shade of military etiquette
was regarded. Colonels, captains, and sergeants were given their
proper place and rank. So with the political world; the President,
Cabinet, and leading officers of the government were learned by
heart, and nothing gratified the keen humor of my father more than
the parrot-like readiness with which I lisped these difficult names.
I thought the President might be as large as the meeting-house, and
the Vice-President perhaps the size of the schoolhouse. And yet, when
later I, like all the rest of our country’s people, was suddenly
thrust into the mysteries of war, and had to find and take my place
and part in it, I found myself far less a stranger to the conditions
than most women, or even ordinary men for that matter. I never
addressed a colonel as captain, got my cavalry on foot, or mounted my
infantry!
When a little child upon his knee he told me that, as he lay helpless
in the tangled marshes of Michigan the muddy water oozed up from the
track of an officer’s horse and saved him from death by thirst. And
that a mouthful of a lean dog that had followed the march saved him
from starvation. When he told me how the feathered arrow quivered in
the flesh and the tomahawk swung over the white man’s head, he told me
also, with tears of honest pride, of the great and beautiful country
that had sprung up from those wild scenes of suffering and danger. How
he loved these new States for which he gave the strength of his youth!
Two sons and two daughters were born to Stephen and Sarah Barton in
their early married life. Then for ten years no other children were
born to them. On Christmas, 1821, their eldest daughter, Dorothy, was
as old as her mother had been at the time of their marriage. Their
eldest son, Stephen, was fifteen, the younger son, David, was thirteen,
and the daughter, Sally, was ten. The family had long considered itself
complete, when the household received Clara as a Christmas present.
Her brothers and sisters were too old to be her playmates. They were
her protectors, but not her companions. She was a little child in the
midst of a household of grown-up people, as they seemed to her. In her
little book entitled “The Story of my Childhood,” she thus describes
her brothers and sisters:
I became the seventh member of a household consisting of the father
and mother, two sisters and two brothers, each of whom for his and her
intrinsic merits and special characteristics deserves an individual
history, which it shall be my conscientious duty to portray as far
as possible as these pages progress. For the present it is enough
to say that each one manifested an increasing personal interest in
the newcomer, and, as soon as developments permitted, set about
instructing her in the various directions most in accord with the
tastes and pursuits of each.
Of the two sisters, the elder was already a teacher. The younger
followed soon, and naturally my book education became their first
care, and under these conditions it is little to say, that I have no
knowledge of ever learning to read, or of a time that I did not do my
own story reading. The other studies followed very early.
My elder brother, Stephen, was a noted mathematician. He inducted me
into the mystery of figures. Multiplication, division, subtraction,
halves, quarters, and wholes, soon ceased to be a mystery, and no toy
equaled my little slate. But the younger brother had entirely other
tastes, and would have none of these things. My father was a lover
of horses, and one of the first in the vicinity to introduce blooded
stock. He had large lands, for New England. He raised his own colts;
and Highlanders, Virginians, and Morgans pranced the fields in idle
contempt of the solid old farm-horses.
Of my brother, David, to say that he was fond of horses describes
nothing; one could almost add that he was fond of nothing else. He was
the Buffalo Bill of the surrounding country, and here commences his
part of my education. It was his delight to take me, a little girl
of five years old, to the field, seize a couple of those beautiful
young creatures, broken only to the halter and bit, and gathering the
reins of both bridles firmly in hand, throw me upon the back of one
colt, spring upon the other himself, and catching me by one foot, and
bidding me “cling fast to the mane,” gallop away over field and fen,
in and out among the other colts in wild glee like ourselves. They
were merry rides we took. This was my riding-school. I never had any
other, but it served me well. To this day my seat on a saddle or on
the back of a horse is as secure and tireless as in a rocking-chair,
and far more pleasurable. Sometimes, in later years, when I found
myself suddenly on a strange horse in a trooper’s saddle, flying for
life or liberty in front of pursuit, I blessed the baby lessons of the
wild gallops among the beautiful colts.
One of the bravest of women, Clara Barton was a child of unusual
timidity. Looking back upon her earliest recollections she said, “I
remember nothing but fear.” Her earliest memory was of her grief in
failing to catch “a pretty bird” when she was two and a half years old.
She cried in disappointment, and her mother ran to learn what was the
trouble. On hearing her complaint, that “Baby” had lost a pretty bird
which she had almost caught, her mother asked, “Where did it go, Baby?”
“Baby” indicated a small round hole under the doorstep, and her mother
gave a terrified scream. That scream awoke terror in the mind of the
little girl, and she never quite recovered from it. The “bird” she had
almost caught was a snake.
Her next memory also was one of fear. The family had gone to a funeral,
leaving her in the care of her brother David. She told of it afterward
as follows:
I can picture the large family sitting-room with its four open
windows, which room I was not to leave, and my guardian was to remain
near me. Some outside duty called him from the house and I was left to
my own observations. A sudden thunder-shower came up; massive rifts
of clouds rolled up in the east, and the lightning darted among them
like blazing fires. The thunder gave them language and my terrified
imagination endowed them with life.
Among the animals of the farm was a huge old ram, that doubtless
upon some occasion had taught me to respect him, and of which I had
a mortal fear. My terrors transformed those rising, rolling clouds
into a whole heaven full of angry rams, marching down upon me. Again
my screams alarmed, and the poor brother, conscience-stricken that he
had left his charge, rushed breathless in, to find me on the floor in
hysterics, a condition of things he had never seen; and neither memory
nor history relates how either of us got out of it.
In these later years I have observed that writers of sketches, in
a friendly desire to compliment me, have been wont to dwell upon
my courage, representing me as personally devoid of fear, not even
knowing the feeling. However correct that may have become, it is
evident I was not constructed that way, as in the earlier years of my
life I remember nothing but fear.