Clara Barton
From Philosopedia
Barton, Clara (25 December 1821 - 12 April 1912)
Founder of the American Red Cross, famed Clara Barton was raised a Universalist. During the Civil war, the 5' farmer’s daughter who weighed scarcely 100 pounds heroically set up a supply service, was a nurse in army camps, worked for the International Red Cross, and organized the American Red Cross, heading it until 1904.
During the war, “the angel of the battlefield” worshipped in Washington, according to the Universalist National Memorial Church there. Her parents had helped establish the Oxford Meeting House, one of the first Universalist churches.
According to The Dictionary of American Biography, Barton “was brought up in the Universalist Church, but was never a Church member.” However, in 1905 she wrote to a Mrs. Norman S. Thrasher:
- Your "belief that I am a Universalist" is as correct as your greater belief in being one yourself. A belief in which all who are privileged to possess it, rejoice. In my case, it was a great gift, for, like St. Paul, I "was born free". . . . I look anxiously for a time in the near future when the busy world will let me once more become a living part of its people, praising God for the advance in the liberal faith of the religious world of today, so largely due to the teachings of this belief.
Joseph McCabe labels Barton a rationalist and a theist, one opposed to Christianity.
She is buried in Oxford, Massachusetts, the insignia of the Red Cross adorning her tombstone. In North Oxford, Barton’s home is the site of a Unitarian Universalist camp for diabetic children.
