National Nurses Week - Clara Barton

Today's Jersey girl is Clara Barton, Civil War heroine known as "the Angel of the Battelfield" and founder of the American Red Cross. Another Massachusettes native who took her first step to improve society's inequities in Worcester Mass, her connection to New Jersey is that she founded the first free public  school in Bordentown in 1852. The enrollment reached 600+ under her guidance but then she left when she was passed over for positon of head of the shcool in favor of a man.

So this woman - who spent three years bringing medical supplies to battlefields where surgeons were reduced to using corn husks to dress wounds, who organized  a program to identify 13,000 dead Union soldiers moldering at the Andersonville prison camp, who traveled to France to bring aid to those civilians who were suffering from the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, who went up against the US government 's belief that the Civil War was the last armed conflict and insisted on developing a relief program that eventually became known as the Red Cross - took herslef to Washington DC where she worked in the US Patent Office for the same pay as the men she worked with.

She had a hand in persuading the US to sign the first Geneva agreement in 1864, which provided for the protection of all medical facilities, their personnel and any civilians who aided the wounded. It also gave the Red Cross international recognition as a neutral medical group and expanded its presence from wartime to times of peace as well.

Clara was the Zelig of her times: she hooked up with Susan B. Anthony and became a life-long suffragette, she knew Fredrick Douglas and became a black activist after the Civil War and she got John D Rockefeller to donate enough money to establish Red Cross International Headquaters in Washington DC. She was America's most decorated woman, earning the both the  Iron Cross of Merit from the emperor of Germany and the Cross of Imperial Russia along with the International Red Cross Medal.

Clara Barton's personal rules of action  were "unconcern for what cannot be helped" and "control under pressure." Good luck with that.  She's buried in Worcester Mass where our College Girl/daughter can easily go to see what kind of stone that red cross is made of on top of Clara's gravemarker.

UPDATE: sharp-eyed reader and internet buddy Brain Kane writes:  "I had never seen that photo of Clara Barton's grave, and yet I recognized it instantly -- it's the model for the image used in the game Civilization III for the 'Battlefield Medicine' wonder. "

Battlefield Medicine image from Civilization III

Comments

[Dave McCutchen]

Iv'e got another Pitcher of Clara Barton's gravestone.So how many is out there. Witch one is the actuaul site.

[Dave McCutchen]

So where is the actual grave site?

I got my information from "Find-A-Grave" where they say that Clara
Barton is buried in North Oxford Cemetary in Worcester, Mass. Go to
this link for her page and notice that immediately under the photos on
the right hand side is a link that says "There are 4 more photos not
showing" and "click here to view all images" to see all the shots of
her gravesite. Perhaps the photo you've seen is one of these others? - Suzette

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=63&pt=Clara%20Barton

[clara]

hi my name is clara I'm frome Iran I'm 26 .
my father named me "clara" because of the lady "clara barton" I read many some book about her . I like her I try to be like her . I have all of her photos that are in internet .
bye

[clara mashhour]

Hi my name is clara I'm frome Iran I'm 26 .
my father named me "clara" because of the lady "clara barton" I read many some book about her . I like her I try to be like her . I have all of her photos that are in internet .
bye