C lara Barton, born on December 25, 1821 in Oxford, Massachusetts, is best known as the founder of the American Red Cross. She was also a schoolteacher, a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office, a self-taught nurse, an abolitionist, a campaigner for women’s rights, a published author, a vegetarian, and one of the most honored women in American history.

As a child, Barton was so shy that her mother consulted L.N. Fowler, a noted phrenologist—one who studies the size and shape of the cranium as an indicator of mental abilities (a popular practice in the 1800s). Barton was advised to become a teacher—a career that employed few women at the time. She started teaching in a local public school at age 17. Barton supported equal rights saying, “I may sometimes be willing to teach for nothing, but if paid at all, I shall never do a man’s work for less than a man’s pay.”

In 1854, Barton moved to Washington, DC and worked for the U.S. Patent office. Three years later, her position was eliminated due to Interior Secretary Robert McClendon’s objection to women in the government workforce. She was subsequently rehired on a part time basis until 1865.

It was at that time that Barton started assisting in nursing and relief efforts for the Union Army during the Civil War. At Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run, Fairfax Court House, Fredericksburg, Antietam, and the Wilderness, she assisted surgeons in stitching up wounds and bloody amputations. Her life long timidity disappeared. She was calm and resourceful, always turning up with food and medical supplies just when they were needed most. She gained national acclaim as “the angel of the battlefield;” but she was also everybody’s caretaker, looking after the men she called “my boys.” In 1863, she relocated to Hilton Head where she formed a romantic relationship with Colonel John J. Elwell. Clara Barton never married, had no children, and was a vegetarian.

Barton continued her nursing and war supply procurements through the end of the Civil War, after which she gave lectures on her war experience in the Northeast and Midwest. She then recuperated from her war experiences in Europe, where she was introduced to the International Red Cross and helped organize relief services during the Franco-Prussian War. Upon her return to the United States, she lobbied for United States ratification of the Red Cross Treaty, and founded the American Red Cross and served as its president for many years.

Clara Barton penned several books including A List of the Union Soldiers Buried at Andersonville (1866) – co-authored with Dorence Atwood, The Red Cross in Peace and War (1898), A Story of the Red Cross (1904), and The Story of My Childhood (1907).

Of her death on April 12, 1912 at the age of 91, the New York Times wrote, “She was a woman of remarkable executive skill, of unbounded enthusiasm, inspired by humane ideas. ... Her name became a household word, associated in the public mind with goodness and mercy.”

Biography provided by the National Women’s Hall of Fame