Clara Barton, Professional Angel

Elizabeth Brown Pryor

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780812200904
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Biographies
• Index: History

Widely known today as the "Angel of the Battlefield, " Clara Barton's personal life has always been shrouded in mystery. In Clara Barton, Professional Angel, Elizabeth Brown Pryor presents a biography of Barton that strips away the heroic exterior and reveals a complex and often trying woman.Based on the papers Clara Barton carefully saved over her lifetime, this biography is the first one to draw on these recorded thoughts. Besides her own voluminous correspondence, it reflects the letters and reminiscences of lovers, a grandniece who probed her aunt's venerable facade, and doctors who treated her nervous disorders. She emerges as a vividly human figure. Continually struggling to cope with her insecure family background and a society that offered much less than she had to give, she chose achievement as the vehicle for gaining the love and recognition that frequently eluded her during her long life.Not always altruistic, her accomplishments were nonetheless extraordinary. On the battlefields of the Civil War, in securing American participation in the International Red Cross, in promoting peacetime disaster relief, and in fighting for women's rights, Clara Barton made an unparalleled contribution to American social progress. Yet the true measure of her life must be made from this perspective: she dared to offend a society whose acceptance she treasured, and she put all of her energy into patching up the lives of those around her when her own was rent and frayed.

Clara Barton

Professional Angel

one

On a cheerless Christmas Day in 1821 Captain Stephen Barton finished his round of chores and wearily entered the house to sit by the fire. The small Hubbell s town in which the Barton's lived had not yet given up the austere customs of Puritan times, and he looked forward to a quiet evening rather than a gay holiday celebration. He leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs, only mildly disturbed by the voices of his wife and a female cousin in the adjoining bedroom. But the commotion increased, and the cousin finally emerged in a flutter to ask him to fetch the doctor; his wife Sarah was about to give birth. Tired and a little blasé—for this was his fifth child—Stephen Barton did not hurry, and a new daughter arrived before he could return.¹

They named her Clarissa Harlowe Barton after a paternal aunt, who in turn had been named for the fashionable and romantic heroine of a Samuel Richardson novel.² But whether inappropriate to the middle-class household or lengthy and cumbersome to pronounce, the name never stuck. The Barton family liked nicknames and the new baby had her share. A brother, walking home from the strict New Oxford school, which held classes even on Christmas Day, met a neighbor who encouraged him to get home quickly, saying, “there’s a little tot at your house”; he dubbed his new sister “Tot,” a nickname that held on until she was well into her eighties.³ Others called her “Tabatha” or “Clary,” and “Baby” was the inevitable appellation for the youngest family member.⁴ But her name was shortened most consistently to “Clara,” and it was with this name that she identified closely throughout her life. Some early school papers have the careful signature “Clarissa H. Barton,” and until the Civil War she signed herself “Clara H. Barton.” After that time, however, the middle initial disappeared altogether, and she used only the name by which she became known to the world—Clara Barton.

“I am told there was great family jubilation on the occasion,” Clara Barton wrote of her birth.⁵ Jubilation, but also expectancy and a sense of novelty, for the family had thought itself complete long before 1821. Stephen Barton and Sarah Stone had married hastily in 1804, and a daughter, Dorothea, was born to them five months later. Two sons, Stephen and David, and another daughter, Sally, had made their appearance by 1810. Sally, closest in age to Clara, was nearly eleven years her senior. Since all of the Barton's were old enough to anticipate the important occasion, the family dignified it with the purchase of a set of Blue Willow china and a pink and white tea service, relatively extravagant purchases for their middle-class household. The china was handed down in the family, a symbol of this happy event and the many later celebrations at which it was used.⁶

They were shaped strongly of New England, these Barton's, reflecting the hard work and hard principles needed to earn a living in the rocky countryside and the individualism that gave fire to town meetings and church councils. Their village of North Oxford, Hubbell s, was well established in 1821, not very different from the other towns of the countryside fifty miles west of Boston, but with a strong local gentry and a bit of romantic history to call its own. The Barton's, Learneds, and Stones—the rootstock of Clara’s family—had not been among the original Huguenot settlers of North Oxford, but they had very early seen the possibilities in its location along the swiftly moving French River and by 1713 had become prominent in the town’s farming and milling industries. A hundred years later, their hopes for the town had been fulfilled. It was then a place of clapboard houses and steepled churches, surrounded by self-sufficient farms. Both saw and grist mills dotted the banks of the French River, providing a prosperous sideline for some of the area’s farming families. A “handsome village on a large plain” is how one gazetteer described it.⁷

Clara learned of the history of her family and town on long winter evenings while sitting by the fire. Throughout her life she recalled the thrill she felt in hearing of the Barton's’ part in the English Wars of the Roses and how the family had come to Hubbell s to begin a new life. There were scores of colorful relatives to take pride in: Samuel Barton, the first to come to North Oxford, who had fled from Salem after unsuccessfully defending an accused woman during the witch trials;⁸ Ebenezer Learned, an early and successful industrialist, a leader of the Hubbell s General Court, but a taciturn and flinty man, the legends of whose stingy ways were overshadowed only by the spectacular exploits of his enormous-footed black slave, Mingo;⁹ and Dr. Stephen Barton, a romantic rebel during the American Revolution, a delegate to the Committees of Correspondence and Safety, and a noted philanthropist, whose independent wife flew in the face of his authority and brewed tea even after the imposition of the hated tax in 1774.¹⁰ (“I have been entertained hours and hours by your interesting, precise and intelligent grandmother Barton, telling us of the tea parties she and her sister Aunt Ballard held in the cellar when grandfather was out or up and didn’t know what was going on in his own disloyal and rebellious home,” Clara told a nephew years later, “and how they hung blankets inside the cellar door to prevent the savory fumes of the tea from reaching the loyal and official olfactories of ‘Pater familias.’” ¹¹) Added to these major figures was a list of tantalizing characters that included French and Indian War soldiers, tireless midwives, and bear-wrestling cousins.¹²

It was from her father that Clara Barton heard most of this family lore. Born in 1774, son of the Revolutionary Dr. Stephen, he had grown up with the heroes of the struggling United States. As a young man he found his own military adventure in the army of General “Mad” Anthony Wayne, a troop that fought numerous Indian wars in the wilderness of the Northwest Territory. The elements of this experience—the three years of privation in uncivilized regions, the expanse and promise he saw in the newly formed United States, the regimen and hardiness required in military life—were the definitive influences of his youth. He spoke often and forcefully of these campaigns, and the tone of his language was one of patriotic loyalty. “His soldier habits and tastes never left him,” his daughter Clara wrote. To the end of his life he delighted in military jargon and the comradeship of fellow veterans.¹³

Tall, lean, sharp-eyed Stephen Barton returned to North Oxford and took up his ancestors’ occupations of farming and milling. He kept to himself, gaining a reputation for minding his own business, which came to be a watchword of the Barton clan. His stately bearing and well-respected family connections, however, made it natural that he should serve as moderator of the town meeting, as selectman, as captain of the militia, and later, in 1836, as representative to the Hubbell s General Court. Local citizens noted his sound judgment, stubbornness, wit, and integrity. He was liberal in his political views, a lifelong democrat and admirer of Andrew Jackson, and he fostered notions of progress for North Oxford in the forms of mechanization of the milling industry, improved education, and religious tolerance. But, in contrast to the intellect that readily embraced technical innovation, his personal inclinations were old-fashioned. He maintained a conservative stance against dancing, gambling, or drinking, and one neighbor recalled that he was the last man in North Oxford to stop tying his hair back in a queue.¹⁴

Leadership often implies high social standing, but Stephen Barton undoubtedly exemplified the middle class. Clara always regarded her background as a “humble life,” lived out in “small environments.”¹⁵ Barton provided well for his family, but their way of life was modest. His accounts with local merchants show that he bought more molasses than sugar, and that calico, not silk, clothed the family’s women. Any available opportunity was seized to make a little extra money, and ends were met by selling excess hay, renting out land or equipment, and boarding the neighbors’ livestock.¹⁶ Like his father he was a versatile worker; he built not only the home in which his youngest daughter was born but many simple pieces of furniture and household equipment. The house was cleverly designed, with a convenient indoor well, but far less imposing than his grandfather’s home.¹⁷ Barns and meadows, an orchard, and a kitchen garden completed the homestead. There were lilac bushes to beautify the place, and Captain Barton was not ashamed to open his house to all who visited the town.

Barton’s democratic tendencies were also fostered by an early association with the Universalist church. Unlike the traditional New England churches with their aristocratic God, the Universalists believed that God encouraged all men and women to accept him and charged them to grasp the opportunity to earn salvation—an opportunity open to all. The Universalists were socially aware, interested in abolition, education, and charity. As a young man Stephen Barton had been present at the North Oxford ordination of Hosea Ballou, a zealous and influential early leader of Universalism. The experience had affected him strongly, causing him to leave his family’s Baptist church. He was not a consistent churchgoer—Clara wrote that although she “could not say that he worshipped in that church, he surely always saw that his family worshipped in it”—yet he worked consistently to build and maintain the church and three years after Clara’s birth was elected an officer.¹⁸

Universalism and his own father’s charity encouraged a strong commitment to philanthropy in Stephen Barton. Between 1826 and 1836 he annually donated $574 toward caring for the community’s poor, and in 1831 he used his own funds to establish a house in which destitute families could be maintained.¹⁹ These acts were gratefully remembered by many Oxford citizens. “I never new [sic] a Barton much stuck up,” stated a neighbor who had benefited from Stephen Barton’s benevolence. “I well recolect [sic] the time I was sick at your house and how you doctored me and wated [sic] on me a Poor Boy I never shall forget it.”²⁰

Stephen Barton exercised his influence at home as well as in the community, though there he had considerable competition from his strong-willed wife. Sarah Stone was ten years younger than her husband. She may once have been the “fine looking” woman of Clara’s memory, but she came to have a rotund, featureless face. She was the daughter of a well-respected North Oxford family, middle-class and with few pretensions. Sarah shared her husband’s Baptist background and his more recently developed interest in Universalist principles.²¹ She seems to have been a homebody, indulging in few activities outside the domestic circle, but she had strong opinions on political and social topics. In the 1830s, well before the abolitionist movement gained a foothold in New England, she signed several antislavery petitions that were sent to the United States House of Representatives.²² Sarah Barton was also outspoken on the subject of women’s rights. Her youngest daughter recalled that she was so early exposed to feminist ideals that she believed she “must have been born believing in the full right of woman to all privileges and positions which nature and justice accord her…. When as a young woman I heard the subject discussed it seemed simply ridiculous that any sensible rational person should question it.”²³

Stephen and Sarah Barton shared liberal sentiments, but they were of entirely different temperaments. Clara described her father as a “calm, sound, reasonable high-tuned moral man”; she remembered her mother as ambitious and of “extreme vigor, always did two days work in one, never slept after 3 o’clock, both nervy and nervous.” ²⁴ Industrious and ingenious, she carried on the multitude of daily chores expected of a New England housewife. Her eccentricities and thriftiness were legendary in the town. A daughter-in-law reported to her family that Sarah fed the Barton's on fruits and vegetables that were not fresh, curiously waiting until they were beginning to decay before she served them. She diligently inspected the vegetable bins, picked out the half-spoiled produce, and spent hours paring and cutting away the decayed portions. Sarah also had the habit of baking a great number of mince or apple pies, then carefully storing them in the cellar pantry. She protected this hoard jealously and was highly displeased if the family requested a slice. The pies, like her fresh produce, inevitably became moldy and unfit to eat. Once in a burst of anger her son Stephen slipped down to the cellar and threw the pies into a pail for hog feed. When confronted by his mother he told her that only pigs would eat moldy pies. The protest did not cure her.²⁵

Sarah Barton coupled this peculiarity with a short and fiery temper. Difficult to please, she exhibited her dissatisfaction with color and gusto. She once dismantled a new iron cookstove, the gift of her husband, and threw it piece by piece into the farm pond because she thought it less functional than her old fireplace oven. She muttered and swore whenever anything displeased her and had little patience with the people around her, who she believed did not work up to her expectations. A story is told that when Sarah Barton died, one of her young granddaughters was brought to see her as she lay in her coffin. A few minutes later someone asked the child if she had seen her grandmother. “Yes,” the little girl replied, “I saw grandma and she never swored once.”²⁶

Stephen and Sarah Barton’s strong personalities made for a stormy relationship. While Stephen’s word was the rule, Sarah loudly protested any interference in her domestic work. Frequently they quarreled violently. In one case Sarah, exasperated with her task of changing the bedding, threw a feather tick down the stairs, catching her husband full in the face and scattering feathers over the entire room. Stephen's anger knew no bounds for some time. He ordered Sarah to recapture every feather, but she complied with such a vigor, “muttering imprecations so vengeful,” that Stephen left home for several days. It was with such scenes that domestic issues were reconciled, and with which Clara grew up.²⁷

The eldest child of this tempestuous union was Dorothea, called Dolly after a paternal aunt. She was tall and dark-haired, a keen student with a good mind and an unbridled desire for learning. At the time of her sister Clara’s birth she was a teacher in North Oxford. Like her mother, Dolly had a magnificent temper and an excitable nature, though she possessed enough patience to do intricate embroidery and to write poetry in a flowing, ornate script. She seems to have been especially interested in Clara, and much of the baby’s daily attention came from this quarter. Sensitive and scholarly, Dolly longed to obtain a higher education than that offered in the village school and wept when made to attend classes with a less bookish brother, who she felt disgraced the family. In later years Clara was to remember her eldest sister’s tender care and “ever watchful hand,” and to give Dolly credit for much of her own interest in intellectual pursuits. “Under suitable conditions…,” maintained Clara, “she should have been the flower of the flock.”²⁸

But Dolly Barton’s nervous and sensitive nature led to tragedy when Clara was six years old. In 1827 Dolly had a mental breakdown from which she never recovered. In an era in which mental illness was regarded as shameful and virtually no treatment was available, the best the Barton family could do was to keep Dolly away from society and try to control her flaring temper. In time Dolly became actually dangerous. She cut her beautiful embroidery into shreds, and the rockers on her favorite chair had to be halted with a restraining strip of wood to keep her from rocking too furiously. As her condition worsened she was kept in a locked room with barred windows to control her rages. She would often beat on the door and scream to be let out. Once she escaped and spent the night in the deep woods outside of the village. Another time she tried to violently attack the wife of her brother David with an axe; the young woman was saved only when her husband ran from a nearby field and restrained Dolly.²⁹

The Barton's never knew what caused Dolly’s insanity, but the tragedy of this sister, “so bright, so scholarly, so promising, and so early blighted,” haunted Clara throughout her life.³⁰ In the late 1870s Clara confided to a doctor that she believed it was due to “some menstrual obstruction which was not understood or treated”—a common medical misunderstanding of the time.³¹ Later, however, Clara told a niece that she believed Dolly would not have lost her mind if she had been able to obtain proper schooling and fulfill her ambitions in the world of letters. Her constant brooding and inward reflection only increased her unhappiness and finally drove her to despair. S...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Clara Barton: Professional Angel
• Notes
• Index