[Illustration: _At her desk in Glen Echo_] 1909 William Howard Taft becomes President 1912 Clara Barton dies April 12 at Glen Echo at age 90 1915 President Woodrow Wilson lays cornerstone for American National Red Cross headquarters in Washington, D.C. 1963 Friends of Clara Barton, Inc., purchases house at Glen Echo 1974 The U.S. Congress establishes on October 26 Clara Barton National Historic Site 1975 National Park Service assumes responsibility for Clara Barton National Historic Site The Professional Angel [Illustration: _Clara Barton and Red Cross workers in Tampa, Florida, await transportation to return to Cuba in 1898._] Square as a Brick As a woman of 87, Clara Barton remembered “nothing but fear” when she looked back to her childhood. She portrayed herself as an introspective, insecure child, too timid to express her thoughts to others. Yet this girl who felt terror in all new situations possessed the qualities that enabled her to overcome that fear, indeed to become the woman most universally acclaimed as courageous in American history. Her childhood was unusual. She was born on December 25, 1821, in North Oxford, Massachusetts, and named Clarissa Harlowe Barton after an aunt, who in turn had been named for a popular novel of her day. Her parents, Capt. Stephen Barton and Sarah Stone Barton, had four other children, all at least 10 years of age by the time this child was born. Thus Clara—as she was always called—was born into a world of adults and, as she later recalled, “had no playmates, but in effect six fathers and mothers.” She might well have added “six teachers,” for she noted that “all took charge of me, all educated me according to personal taste.” [Illustration: _Sarah Stone Barton was a native New Englander and was born in 1787. She married at age 17, and in her first seven years of marriage, she gave birth to her first four children. The last, Clara, followed after a ten-year interval._] Sally Barton, her mother, was an erratic, nervous woman, with a reputation for profanity and a violent temper. She vented her frustrations in compulsive housework, and Clara Barton later recalled that her mother “never slept after 3 o’clock in the morning” and “always did two days work in one.” Sally Barton spent little time with her youngest daughter, preferring to leave her with other family members. Thus Clara Barton learned political and military lore from her father, mathematics from her brother Stephen, and horseback riding from brother David. Her two sisters, Sally and Dolly, concentrated on teaching her academic subjects. Besides this household instruction, she attended both private and public schools in the Oxford area.