A Young Clara Barton   

The foundation of Clara Barton the person came from her childhood experiences. Historians only real knowledge of this time comes from an autobiography that Barton wrote in her later years titled: The Story of My Childhood. In my thesis, I examined key events that appeared to be connected to the Clara Barton of later years. The retrospective look on back on her childhood singled out events that began her lifetime service of helping others. Her well rounded education that surpassed the traditional girl's education of the time opened Barton's eyes to the larger world, the world outside the house that she then threw herself into.

Born December 25, 1821 to Captain Stephen and Mrs. Sarah Barton, Clarissa Harlowe Barton was the youngest of five children.  At a young age, Barton sat listening to Captain Barton’s French and Indian War stories, determined to help people and represent her country.  Captain Barton told his daughter of “military and political lore,” as she “listened breathlessly to his war stories.”[1] She learned to idolize these men of war, understand their importance and respect their position, recognizing that the knowledge may help her in adult life.

Captain Stephen Barton and his wife Sarah, Clara Barton’s parents

Between Clara’s lessons on military tactics, school lessons from her sisters, and real life lessons from her brothers, her mother Sarah Barton “attempted very little, but rather regarded the whole thing as a sort of mental conglomeration, and looked on with a kind of amused curiosity to see what they would make of it.”[2]  Instead of teaching her youngest daughter the role of women in society, she left her to the lessons of everyone else, wondering how it would impact her future development, but thankful for the help in raising the child that was much younger than her siblings.  Clara Barton, whose own words are the only source of information on her childhood, reflected on her mother’s tactics for raising the youngest Barton: “Indeed, I heard her remark many years after, that I came out with a more level head than she would have thought possible.”[3]

Her siblings played various roles in her childhood.  Stephen, described by Clara as strong and muscular, taught her all she needed to know about numbers, “the mystery of figures,”[4] while David educated her in athletics, a subject inappropriate for females, but one he deemed “practical teaching.”[5]  His fondness for horses allowed David to instruct five-year old Clara to ride on young, untrained colts on the family farm, holding on to the mane, and taking off galloping fast away.[6]  Clara’s sisters were more concerned with her book knowledge.  By age eleven, Clara’s oldest sister Dorothea could no longer offer her guidance as she was confined to closed quarters due to mental illness.[7]   Her other sister, Sally, who had been away at boarding school, returned to aid in her teachings, specifically keeping Clara’s welfare in mind and educating through books and poems as an inspiration for life.[8]  Being the youngest child, Barton was not trained in a maternal role, needing to care for any younger siblings, but she came to grasp that role when she looked after all Americans during her adult years. 

As almost a foreshadowing of her future role in American history, Barton first played nurturer to her brother David when he fell from the rafters of a barn.  Barton sat by her brother’s bed, having faith in his recovery as doctors tried every known method they could.  His injuries were internal.  Describing the moment, Barton recalled the two years she spent as her brother’s nurse, “an accidental turn in my wheel of fortune changed my entire course (for a time at least) and how much bearing, if any, it may have had on the future, I have never been able to determine.”[9] 

David’s fall and recovery set the foundation for Barton’s years of helping other people, and in her later years, Barton realized the significance.  While sitting at David’s bedside, Barton learned the fundamentals of medicines, various cures, and soothing anointments.  She took this knowledge with her to the fields of the Civil War and to the sites of natural disasters to soothe the soldiers and victims as she soothed her brother’s pain.  Barton’s bedside manner and faith in a recovery kept David alive when the world had given up hope.  The episode with her own brother appeared to foreshadow where life would take Barton, as even she recognized.  Barton’s continuing aid to all Americans developed from the same aid and support she gave to her brother, proving that her brother and her fellow Americans were all family.

Barton’s childhood autobiography, written in the latter years of her life, illustrated a young girl consciously aware of all of her actions and the lessons each taught.  While it opened windows into Barton’s past, it also impeded any detailed analysis because readers saw what she wanted them to see.  In the opening to The Story of My Childhood, Barton spoke of her childhood in pleasant ways, and taught lessons in the misfortunes she encountered.  This approach to telling her story created an image in which Barton appeared wise and older than her age to teach responsibility and deeper thinking.  Barton’s account illustrated the sphere of domesticity in which she was raised, where the family actively participated in each others’ lives, and the education and upbringing of children was not left strictly to the mother, creating the well rounded child that defined Clara Barton from a young age.  The boys in the family had learned characteristically masculine skills—athletics and finances—from their father, the daughters of the family were versed in book knowledge.  While Mrs. Barton took no immediate role in her youngest daughter’s education, it was because the four siblings and father produced a well rounded education for Clara, and Mrs. Barton found it easier step aside.  Barton’s detailed description of her childhood showed weakness in order to show her strength at overcoming obstacles and making a difference; it further created her as a role model to girls and boys, a figure that children will look up to and aspire to be like through her embracing examples of womanhood on a broader basis, providing care for people during epidemics and natural disasters.

[1] Clara Barton, Story of my Childhood (Transcript, Clara Barton National Historic Site, Glen Echo, Maryland), 5.

[2] Ibid, 5-6.

[3] Ibid, 6.

[4] Ibid, 5.

[5] Ibid, 20.

[6] Ibid, 5.

[7] Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Clara Barton: Professional Angel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987).

[8] Barton, Childhood, 16.

[9] Ibid.