A Story of the Red Cross

Clarissa Harlowe Barton (1821–1912) was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, and attended the Liberal Institute of Clinton, New York. She organized a system of free public schools in Bordentown, New Jersey in 1851. While working for the US Patent Office in Washington, DC, Clara Barton launched her philanthropic career when the Civil War began. She used her own money to get supplies for needy soldiers, eventually becoming supervisor of nursing for the Army of the James. Her names “Angel of the Battlefield,” and “America’s Florence Nightingale,” came from her work on behalf of the wounded on the battlefield regardless of risk to herself. During the Franco-Prussian War, she became associated with the International Red Cross, and founded the American Red Cross in 1881. Largely through her efforts, the US Senate confirmed the Geneva Convention in 1882. Upon her death in 1912, the Detroit Free Press wrote: “She was perhaps the most perfect incarnation of mercy the modern world has known.”