Nurses who led the best way: Clara Barton

To kick off Nurses Week, we start with Clara Barton: “one of the honored women in American history” Known as the “Angel of the Battlefield”, Barton served as a nurse through the Civil War on the battles of Chantilly, Fairfax Station, Fredericksburg, Harpers Ferry, Antietam, South Mountain, Petersburg, Charleston, and Cold Harbor, often on the front of the road. She not only cared for the wounded, but in addition comforted, cooked, read, wrote letters and prayed for them. Barton also helped establish a national cemetery and identified the graves of 13,000 men on the Andersonville, Georgia prison.

In 1870, on the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Barton was inducted into the International Red Cross. Her time with the organization through the war led her to work with Red Cross officials in Switzerland to ascertain a charter in America in 1900. Barton left the organization in 1904 to found the American National First Aid Association, which emphasized basic aid instruction , emergency preparedness and development of first aid kits. She served as its honorary president for five years.

After publishing several books in regards to the founding of the American Red Cross, Barton died in 1912 at her home in Glen Echo, Maryland. Her contributions to the nursing career are remembered today through the organization’s continued work.