BARTON, Clara, American philanthropist : b. Oxford, Mass., 1821; d. 12 April 1912. She early became a teacher and founded at Bor dentown, N. J., a free school. In 1854 it had grown to 600, when she became a clerk in the patent office in Washington. On the outbreak of the Civil War she resigned her clerkship and became a volunteer nurse in the army hos pitals and on the battlefield. In 1864 she was appointed to the charge of the hospitals at the front of the Army of the James. She was present at several battles, and in 1865 was placed by President Lincoln in charge of the search for missing men of the Union armies, having already devoted much time to that work at her own expense. In connection with this work she identified and marked the graves of more than 12,000 soldiers in the National Cemetery at Andersonville, Ga. On the brealcing out of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, she aided the Grand Duchess of Baden in preparing military hospitals, assisted the Red Cross Society, and at the request of the authorities, superintended the distribution:of work to the poor of Strass burg in 1871, after the siege, and in 1872 did a like workin Paris. At the close of the war she was decorated with the Golden Cross of Baden and the Iron Cross of Germany. On the organ ization of the American Red Cross Society in 1881 she' was made its president, and in that capacity in 1884 had charge of the measures to relieve sufferers.froin the Mississippi and Ohio
floods. In 1883 she was appointed superinten dent of the Reformatory Prison for Women at Sherborn, Mass. In 1884 she was the United States representative at the Red Cross Confer ence in Geneva. It was her suggestion that led to an amendment of the rules of the Red Cross Society permitting relief not orily in war but in times of such other calamities as fain, ines, floods, earthquakes and pestilence. In 1889 she had charge of movements in behalf of suf ferers from the floods at Johnstown, Pa.; in 1892 distributed relief to the Russtan famine sufferers; in 1896 personally directed relief nieasures at the scenes of the Armenian massa cres; in 1898, at the request of President Mc Kinley, took relief to the Cuban reconcentrados, •and performed field work during the war with Spain; and in /900 undertook to direct the re lief of sufferers at Galveston, but broke down physically. She resigned from the Red Cross Society in 1904. She published (History of the Red Cross' (1883) ; (History of the Red Crost in Peace and War> (1898) • (Story of the Red Cross' (1904) ; (Story Of My Childhood' (1907). Consult Adams and Foster, (Heroines of Modern Progress' (1913).