BARTON, BERNARD English poet, was born at Carlisle on Jan. 31, 1784. His parents were Quakers, and he was commonly known as the Quaker poet. He was a bank clerk at Woodbridge, Suffolk. Barton published several volumes of verse, but is chiefly remembered for his friendship with Charles Lamb, which arose out of a remonstrance addressed by him to Lamb on the freedom with which the Quakers had been handled in the Essays of Elia. When Barton contemplated resigning his bank clerkship and supporting himself entirely by literature, Lamb dissuaded him. "Keep to your bank," he wrote, "and the bank will keep you." Barton died at Woodbridge on Feb. 19, 1849. His daughter Lucy married Edward FitzGerald.
See Poems and Letters of Bernard Barton, selected by Lucy Barton, with a biographical notice by Edward FitzGerald (1849) • BARTON, CLARA (1821-1912), American philanthropist, was born in Oxford (Mass.), in 1821. During the Civil War she distributed supplies for the relief of wounded soldiers ; and at its close she organized at Washington a bureau of records to aid in the search for missing men. In connection with this work she identified and marked the graves of more than 12,000 soldiers in the National Cemetery at Andersonville, Georgia. During the Franco-Prussian War, Miss Barton assisted in organizing military hospitals. In 1871 she superintended the distribution of relief to the poor in Strasbourg and in 1872 performed a like service in Paris. For her services she was decorated with the Iron Cross by the German emperor. In 1873 she returned to the United States, where she at once began her efforts to effect the organization of the United States branch of the Red Cross and to bring her country into the Treaty of Geneva. Her efforts were successful in 1881-82. She was the first president of the American Red Cross, holding the position until 1904. She represented the United States at the international conference held at Geneva, 1884; Karlsruhe, 1887; Rome, 1892; Vienna, 1897; and St. Petersburg (Leningrad), 1903. She was the author of the American amendment to the constitution of the Red Cross which provides that the society shall distribute relief not only in war but in times of such other calami ties as floods, earthquakes, cyclones and pestilence. She conducted the society's relief for sufferers from the yellow fever in Florida (1887), the flood at Johnstown, Pa. (1889), the famine in Russia (1891), the hurricane along the coast of South Carolina (1893), the massacre in Armenia (1896), the Spanish-American War in Cuba (1898), the hurricane at Galveston, Texas (1900), and several other calamities. She wrote An History of the Red Cross (1882) ; The Red Cross in Peace and JVar (1898) ; A Story of the Red Cross 0904), and Story of my Childhood (1907) . She died at Glen Echo (Md.) , on April 12, 1912.
See Corra Bacon-Foster, Clara Barton, Humanitarian (1918).