Date: Fri 19-Dec-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: DONNAM

Quick Words:

Barton-Red-Cross-MIA-soldiers

Full Text:

More To Barton Than Nursing

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Civil War had ended and it would be another 15 years

before the "Angel of the Battlefield" established the American Red Cross.

In between, famous war nurse Clara Barton ran a missing soldiers operation

that tracked down 22,000 men from 1865 to 1868, say federal historians who

have now documented some of her work with the surprise discovery of records in

a government attic.

"When the battle was over, she needed something to do," said Gary Scott,

National Park Service regional historian. "She would compile missing soldiers

lists and send them to post offices across the country to try to locate the

soldiers."

Mr Scott uncovered one of the lists during early November while going through

boxes of documents in the attic of a government building. Situated between the

White House and the Capitol, it once housed Barton's Missing Persons Office. A

worker for a contractor alerted the Park Service to the attic treasures,

luckily before the building owned by the General Services Administration and

slated for demolition had come down.

The discovery of a sign from Barton's office first linked the documents to her

operation.

"It was quite remarkable to us that this stuff came from the Civil War," Mr

Scott said.

Government records, Civil War newspapers, leftover wallpaper remnants and even

19th Century clothes, from embroidered slippers to a frock coat, which "looked

like something Abraham Lincoln would have worn," were among the items stowed

in a sealed-off crawl space, Mr Scott said. Some of the attic artifacts

indicate the office may have been used as a residence, according to the

historian, who believes Barton may have lived in the building.

The unexpected find of the documents that languished for more than a century

highlights a lesser-known period of Barton's life and of post-Civil War

efforts to heal the nation.

Born in North Oxford, Mass., in 1821, Clara Barton was a teacher and

government worker before heading off to minister the wounds of soldiers, often

on bloody battle sites.

Barton came into the missing soldiers business when a prisoner of war brought

her a list of dead soldiers from the legendary Andersonville Confederate

prison camp in Georgia. Nearly 13,000 of the 45,000 confined Union soldiers

died from disease, filth, starvation and exposure there. Thanks to her work,

Barton was able to return to Andersonville and mark the graves of thousands of

soldiers. She later published a list of their names.

"Once people realized she had found dead soldiers, she started receiving

thousands of letters from mothers and daughters," Mr Scott said.

As head of the missing persons office, Clara Barton became the first woman to

run a government bureau, receiving $15,000 in Congressional appropriations and

working with her own staff. The roster unearthed by Mr Scott was marked 5 and

contained hundreds of names of soldiers.

Barton went on to establish the American Red Cross in 1881. She died in 1912.

The Park Service turned over the findings to Ford's Theatre, where Lincoln was

assassinated in 1865, in hopes the items will be displayed. Mr Scott also

hopes the government building will be spared from demolition, although

prospects are uncertain.