Clara Barton was an American social reformer, nurse, and founder of the American Red Cross. She was the first woman to organize relief efforts for American Civil War soldiers on battlefields. After the war she went on to found the American Red Cross. Clara Barton was born in 1821 in Castine, Maine
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She was named after her famous aunt, Clara Barton. Her father was a doctor who served on the U.S. Navy's flagship USS Constitution during the war of 1812.
As a young woman she enrolled in the Hartford Female Seminary where she learned French, mathematics, Latin, and music. In 1840 she joined her older brother Charles in New York City where he had become a successful merchant and ship owner and established a commercial relationship with Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine. In 1845 she became treasurer of the Hartford Philharmonic Society and helped organize concerts to raise funds for singers and musicians who had lost their jobs during hard times following the Panic of 1837.
In 1850 she traveled to Europe where she lived for three years studying the works of Thomas Carlyle and Emile de Girardin who founded many philanthropic institutions throughout France which became models for her own work. Returning to New York City she married Henry Barton in 1853; they settled in Brooklyn Heights where Henry became a successful merchant and banker; they had two sons and two daughters and were very active in social causes such as temperance and women's groups. In 1859 Henry's health failed and in 1862 he died at age 46 leaving Clara with five children ranging from ages one to sixteen years old.
She continued her philanthropic work raising funds for various causes but spent much time caring for her family after Henry's death; when her father passed away in 1865 she took over his business which made them one of the wealthiest families in Brooklyn Heights. Her own health began to fail when she was fifty years old which forced her to spend more time at home with her children; during this time she also began working with wounded soldiers returning from the Civil War that had been left without medical care or monetary support from their government. In 1870 a group of Union army veterans including former officers Marcus Daly and John Forsyth organized a series of benefits for wounded soldiers including concerts, dinners, speeches, lectures, theatrical performances, lectures, debates, torchlight parades, banquets, receptions, tables d'hote dinners at hotels across town from each other or under tents pitched on city streets.
They were hosted by wealthy supporters such