Clara Barton National Historic Site, MarylandUnited States. National Park Service
History
Clara Barton National Historic Site, Maryland
United States. National Park Service
Barton, Clara, 1821-1912; Clara Barton National Historic Site (Md.)
Part 3 Guide and Adviser 66
Clara Barton National Historic Site: A Saga of Preservation 68
National Park Service Sites Associated with Clara Barton 72
National Park Service Sites Commemorating American Women 75
Related Sites 76
Armchair Explorations: Some Books You May Want to Read 78
Index 79
Clara Barton and Her Times
[Illustration: _The figures are, from left to right: Grand Duchess
Louise of Baden, Antoinette Margot, George Kennan, Julian Hubbell,
Clara Barton, and Jean-Henri Dunant._]
A Look at the Past
Clara Barton, humanitarian and founder of the American Red Cross, spent
the last 15 years of her life in a house in Glen Echo, Maryland, now
known as Clara Barton National Historic Site. Here her contributions to
American life and her personal achievements are memorialized. Here you
can see many of her personal effects and some of the awards given to
her. Here, too, you can learn of the substance of her life and see how
she lived and worked.
From Glen Echo, you can go on to several other National Park System
sites associated with Clara Barton: Antietam, Andersonville, Manassas,
Fredericksburg, and Johnstown. Together these diverse sites document her
life, her work, and her legacy. Begin here at her house and fill in
details of her life as you come across them at the other sites. For
example, the lumber you see in the building at Glen Echo was originally
used as temporary housing for victims of the Johnstown, Pennsylvania,
flood in 1889. After Clara Barton and the Red Cross finished helping the
injured and the homeless in that city, the structure was dismantled and
shipped to Washington, D.C. Two years later, the materials were used at
Glen Echo to construct a national headquarters for the American Red
Cross.
The new building had essentially the same lines as the Johnstown
structure with various alterations to accommodate the needs of the
American Red Cross and Clara Barton herself.
Initially she planned to use this building as a warehouse for American
Red Cross supplies. Six years after its construction, the building was
remodeled and used not only as a warehouse, but also as the headquarters
of the new organization and as the residence for her and her staff. The
structure served all purposes well. Clara Barton did not distinguish
between herself and the organization she founded. The lines were
blurred; she was the Red Cross, and the Red Cross was Clara Barton. That
is evident here in the house, for she did not separate living space from
working space. The building’s purposes merged in its principal resident.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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