The Life of Clara Barton, Founder of the American Red Cross (Vol. 1 of 2) — Edition Insights

ng life. She lived to enter her tenth decade, and when she died was still so normal in the soundness of her bodily organs and in the clarity of her mind and memory that it seemed she might easily have lived to see her hundredth birthday. Hers was a life spent largely in the Nation’s capital. She knew personally every president from Lincoln to Roosevelt, and was acquainted with nearly every man of prominence in our national life. When she went abroad, her associates were people of high rank and wide influence in their respective countries. No American woman received more honor while she lived, either at home or abroad, and how worthily she bore these honors those know best who knew her best.

The time has come for the publication of a definitive biography of Clara Barton. Such a book could not earlier have been prepared. The “Life of Clara Barton,” by Percy H. Epler, published in 1915, was issued to meet the demand which rose immediately after her death for a comprehensive biography, and it was published with the full approval of Miss Barton’s relatives and of her literary executors, including the author of the present work. But, by agreement, the two large vaults containing some tons of manuscripts which Miss Barton left, were not opened until after the publication of Mr. Epler’s book. It was the judgment of her literary executors, concurred in by Mr. Epler, that this mine of information could not be adequately explored within any period consistent with the publication of a biography such as he contemplated. For this reason, the two vaults remained unopened until his book was on the market. The contents of these vaults, containing more than forty closely packed boxes, is the chief source of the present volume, and this abundant material has been supplemented by letters and personal reminiscences from Clara Barton’s relatives and intimate friends.

Clara Barton considered often the question of writing her own biography. A friend urged this duty upon her in the spring of 1876, and she promised to consider the matter. But the incessant demands made upon her time by duties that grew more steadily imperative prevented her doing this.

In 1906 the request came to her from a number of school-children that she would tell about her childhood; and she wrote a little volume of one hundred and twenty-five pages, published in 1907 by Baker and Taylor, entitled, “The Story of my Childhood.” She was gratified by the reception of this little book, and seriously considered using it as the corner stone of her long contemplated autobiography. She wrote a second section of about fifteen thousand words, covering her girlhood and her experiences as a teacher at home and in Borden town, New Jersey. This was never published, and has been utilized in this present biography.

Beside these two formal and valuable contributions toward her biography, she left journals covering most of the years from her girlhood until her death, besides vast quantities of letters received by her and copies of her replies. Her personal letters to her intimate friends were not copied, as a rule, but it has been possible to gather some hundreds of these. Letter-books, scrap-books, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, records of the American Red Cross, and papers, official and personal, swell the volume of material for this book to proportions not simply embarrassing, but almost overwhelming.

She appears never to have destroyed anything. Her temperament and the habits of a lifetime impelled her to save every scrap of material bearing upon her work and the subjects in which she was interested. She gathered, and with her own hand labeled, and neatly tied up her documents, and preserved them against the day when she should be able to sift and classify them and prepare them for such use as might ultimately be made of them. It troubled her that she was leaving these in such great bulk, and she hoped vainly for the time when she could go through them, box by box, and put them into shape. But they accumulated far more rapidly than she could have assorted them, and so they were left until her death, and still remained untouched, until December, 1915, when the vaults were opened and the heavy task began of examining this material, selecting from it the papers that tell the whole story of her life, and preparing the present volumes. If this book is large, it is because the material compelled it to be so. It could easily have been ten times as thick.