📍Clara Barton Birthplace, North Oxford, Massachusetts, USA
1821 – 1912“I was born in North Oxford, Massachusetts in 1821, the youngest of five children, and the farmhouse where I grew up gave me the self-reliance and the practical competence that would later make me effective in circumstances that defeated more genteel women. I taught school and worked as a clerk before the Civil War, and when war came I went to the front as a volunteer nurse — not waiting for permission, simply appearing at the battlefield at Antietam with a wagonload of supplies. I worked for four years in field hospitals and on the front lines, and then spent the years after the war locating missing soldiers and notifying their families. I founded the American Red Cross in 1881, modelling it on Henri Dunant's organisation, and led it for twenty-three years. My farmhouse in North Oxford was always home, but I spent most of my adult life living where the need was.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons
Sources: Oates, S. A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War (1994), Free Press; Pryor, E. Clara Barton: Professional Angel (1987), University of Pennsylvania Press