A request from Abby…
Her full name was Clarissa Harlowe Barton. She was a humanitarian and founder of the American Red Cross, known as the “angel of the battlefield”. Born on December 25, 1821 in Oxford, Mass., the youngest of 5 children in a middle-class family, Barton was educated at home, and at 15 started teaching school. In addtion to the Foundation of the American Red Cross, she established a free public school in Bordentown, N.J. Though she is remembered as the founder of the American Red Cross, her only prewar medical experience came when for 2 years she nursed an invalid brother.
Sources:
American Red Cross
Clara Barton Biography
Encyclopedia Britannica
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This is a request from quiet possibly our youngest listener. Abby Phillips age 7, daughter of Shane from Texas. I hope you like the episode Abby!
Her full name was Clarissa Harlowe Barton. She was a humanitarian and founder of the American Red Cross, known as the “angel of the battlefield”.
Born on December 25, 1821 in Oxford, Mass., the youngest of 5 children in a middle-class family, Barton was educated at home, and at 15 started teaching school. In addtion to the Foundation of the American Red Cross, she established a free public school in Bordentown, N.J. Though she is remembered as the founder of the American Red Cross, her only prewar medical experience came when for 2 years she nursed an invalid brother.
After 18 years as a schoolteacher in Massachusetts and New Jersey, Barton moved to Washington, D.C., and became a clerk in the U.S. Patent Office.
In 1865, at the request of President Abraham Lincoln, she set up a bureau of records to aid in the search for missing men. While she was in Europe for a rest, the Franco-German War broke out, and she again distributed relief supplies to war victims. She helped with the effort to identify 13,000 unknown Union dead at the horrific prisoner-of-war camp at Andersonville, Ga. This experience launched her on a nationwide campaign to identify soldiers missing during the Civil War. She published lists of names in newspapers and exchanged letters with veterans and soldiers’ families. The search for missing soldiers and years of toil during the Civil War physically debilitated Miss Barton. Her doctors recommended a restful trip to Europe.
Although still ailing, another crisis jolted Miss Barton into action. The outbreak of war in 1870 between France and Prussia (part of modern-day Germany) brought hardship to many French civilians. Miss Barton joined the relief effort, and in the process, was impressed with a new organization–the Red Cross.
On May 21, 1881 in Washington, D.C., she established the American Red Cross. In 1882 she succeeded in having the United States sign the Geneva Agreement on the treatment of the sick, wounded, and dead in battle and the handling of prisoners of war. Barton’s organization took its service beyond that of the International Red Cross Movement by adding disaster relief to battlefield assistance. She wrote the American amendment to the constitution of the Red Cross, which provides for the distribution of relief not only in war but also in times of such calamities as famines floods, earthquakes, cyclones, and pestilence.
Barton conducted relief for sufferers from disasters in the 1880s and 1890s and served in Cuba during the Spanish-American War in 1898.
The natural disaster with the highest death toll in U.S. history was the Galveston, Texas, hurricane of 1900 in which an estimated 6,000 people were killed. Clara Barton, founder and president of the American Red Cross in 1900, gathered a team and traveled by train from Washington, D.C., to Galveston as soon as she heard the news of the disaster to provide relief.
She served as president of the American Red Cross until 1904, when, under increasing critisim of her arbitrary leadership, she stepped down to avoid further dissension within the organization. She wrote several books, including History of the Red Cross in 1882 and The Red Cross in Peace and War in 1899. She retired to her home at Glen Echo, outside Washington, D.C., where she died April 12, 1912.
Biographies are P.H. Epler, Life of Clara Barton, and Ishbel Ross, Angel of the Battlefield: The Life of Clara Barton (1956).
From Encyclopedia Britannica
American Red Cross – http://www.redcross.org/faq/0,1096,0_315_,00.html#381
Clara Barton Biography – http://www.civilwarhome.com/bartonbio.htm
This episodes frapper mappers are:
- Celio Barreto from Osaka, Japan he says “Great work!! I enjoy listening to your podcasts a lot. Maybe someday I’ll set one up regarding japan. Great job! I anxiously await for a new history podcast each week!”
- Luke Bray from Hannibal, Missouri says “Hooah”
- Philip Higson from Santa Barbra, California
- Chris Carswell from Geelong, Victoria in Australia Chris says “Hello everyone!”
- Shane Phillips from Lewisville, Texas