Clara Barton's Civil War home - Clara Barton's Neighborhood

Hello everybody, this is Jake Wynn, Director of Interpretation for the National Museum of Medicine and the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum coming at you live from the Missing Soldiers Office Museum here in Washington, D.C. Today's program, we have a special program we're bringing to you all. We're going to do an outdoor virtual walking tour of Clara Barton's neighborhood. So we're going to look at the part of Washington, part of the Union Capitol where Clara Barton worked during the Civil War era. We're going to be hitting a number of spots that I'm sure you probably have may have visited in the past, maybe you're familiar with, but we're going to talk about how to relate to Clara Barton's experience during the Civil War and how it shaped her life and ultimately her legacy. So we're starting this morning from the Missing Soldiers Office Museum, which I will let you know they are open for appointments on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. So you can go onto our website, clarabartonmuseum.org to get more information about that. We do have limited scheduling for the remainder of 2020. So if you're planning a trip to come into D.C. in 2021, now is the time to start thinking about that. We have been mostly closed the Missing Soldiers Office since March. We have been open for some appointments, but we have not been open to the public the way that we have been at the Civil War Medicine Museum in Frederick. So if you would like to support the museum, you like the videos that we're going to be posting today, you like these stories and you want to know more, you want to help support the museum, I highly recommend going on and supporting our annual fundraising drive. This year it's going to help us with the lost admission revenue that we have suffered due to the 2020 pandemic. Many museums around the country have been struggling as a result of the pandemic. We have adapted. We've been doing these virtual programs going back to March. So we're very happy to be able to do this for you. If you are enjoying these videos, please go ahead and go and check out that link that you'll find in the comment section. Go and support the National Museum of Civil War Medicine. Support the Clarabarton Missing Soldiers Office Museum. For those of you who have already donated, thank you so much. We've already raised $4,200 just in the last week or so. So we're very excited about that. Thank you for contributing. If you have already become a member or donated previously, thank you for all of your support of the museum. You allow us to do what we do, allow us to fulfill our mission. So thank you to all of you out there. We are very, very appreciative for all of your generosity and for your support for us at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine and here at the Clarabarton Missing Soldiers Office Museum. So we'll jump into our tour now. Why here? Why does this museum exist? So in this building, which is modern day 437 7th Street in Washington, DC, Clarabarton lived in this building on the third floor from 1861 until 1868. This is a really crucial moment in Clarabarton's life. She is 39 when the Civil War breaks out. She's on her second career. She was born in Massachusetts in 1821. Her first career was as an educator, as a teacher in Massachusetts, and she opened a school in New Jersey in the early 1850s. In 1854, she moved to Washington, DC and became one of the first women to work for the federal government. She worked just down the street, about two blocks away from here, at the United States Patent Office as a clerk. She does become one of the first women to work for the federal government there. We'll talk about that story a little bit later in our tour today. But she moves in here in 1861, June of 1861, just as the Civil War is breaking out. This building was constructed in the 1850s. If you were visiting this building in 1861, chances are you'd be standing in a jewelry store. The second floor of this building were offices for lawyers. Denton had an office there. The Washington Chess Club had an office there in 1863. And on the third floor was residential. There was a boarding house here that Barton is going to live in from 1861 until 1868. It's very much a middle-class existence. For Clara Barton, though, as the Civil War is breaking out, she has no nursing experience. So we think of Clara Barton as the angel of the battlefield, as you see in the mural behind me. You think of her as the angel of the battlefield. Well, she had no nursing experience before the war, no trained nursing experience. She never went to school to be a nurse. She's going to learn on the battlefield during the Civil War. And this is going to be her home base. She is going to come back to this boarding house, come back to this building after experiences on the battlefields of Virginia and at Antietam in 1862 and Fredericksburg, which we're about to commemorate the anniversary of that battle coming up in a few weeks. And in South Carolina in 1863, come back here in 1865, just as the war is drawing to a close. And Clara Barton uses this building and her room on the third floor as essentially a warehouse. She writes about people were sending things. She did not independently wealthy, and she's going to be funding essentially a one-woman NGO during the Civil War, a one-woman sanitary commission. She gathers supplies from people all across the country and is ultimately going to send them off to the battlefield, and in some cases deliver them herself to the battlefield. But this, she writes about the people sending her things. Quote, people began to send things to me until the house was full and the garrets around us were filled. I had to rent rooms and warehouses to store things. The good people of the land sent me every kind of thing imaginable, clothing, medical supplies, food, wine, everything transported that women's hearts in America could wish their dear one to have. So she goes doing this, goes on through the Civil War as a relief worker, as a battlefield nurse at Antietam. She almost gets killed by a stray bullet while working at a field hospital and nursing soldiers there. And in 1865, she returns here to Washington D.C. to found what becomes known as the Missing Soldiers Office. And so Clara Barton and a team of clerks are going to spearhead the effort to look for missing Union soldiers after the Civil War was over. Ultimately, her and her team are going to be able to find 22,000 missing soldiers to tell their families what had happened during the Civil War, going to be providing closure for them, in some cases helping them to get pension money from the federal government that they deserved. And so this is going to be, the Missing Soldiers Office is going to be kind of the linchpin that is going to send her off on her experience towards becoming the founder of the American Red Cross. She's going to learn about the Red Cross shortly after, closing the Missing Soldiers Office while on her way to Europe. And so Clara Barton's humanitarian career really begins in this building. This is where it starts. This is where she begins on that journey to becoming one of the most famous women in American history, really in world history as well, in the mid to late 19th century and early 20th century. This is where it all starts. And you can come and visit here. You can come and visit the museum. We, like I mentioned at the top, we are open for appointments. You can come visit and we look forward to in 2021 much more availability to come in and to see the space and tour through these historic rooms. I will mention the mural behind me. This was a previous fundraising campaign for the National Museum of War Medicine and Clara Barton's Soldiers Office. This was completed by an artist named Peter Waddell. Peter's a great friend of the museum. And he put this together, these little bits of Clara's life based on her time living here in the building and all of the places she went, the things she did, and how it ultimately shaped her life. So this is a great way of visualizing what Clara Barton's experiences were like during the Civil War. And today that's what we're going to be trying to do as well. We're going to go out to some of the places in Washington, in the neighborhood around the missing soldiers office, where Clara Barton frequented, where she passed by, and how those places ultimately shaped her. So stick with us throughout the next hour or so. We're going to be hitting some spots in Washington with connections to Clara Barton. If you enjoy this video, please hit the button, hit the share button, and head on down to the comments section and you can send us a donation. Our fundraising campaign helps support our museums. Thank you very much and we'll see you in a few minutes.