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What happens when a regiment loses track of one of their own? In the chaos of war, this unfortunate circumstance sometimes happened, including to Private Jesse Wiley Ball, Company F of the 2nd Kentucky Infantry. Born in Virginia in 1832, Jesse and the Ball family moved to Indiana in the late 1840s. […]
Massachusetts has an undisputed claim on Thanksgiving. The story of the Mayflower, early America’s tough start, and the meal shared between Native Americans and Pilgrims in 1621 is part of our national identity. But Washington, D.C. deserves some credit for the holiday too. For it was here, in an attempt to lift […]
The Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.) hasn’t had a living member since 1956. At the corner of 7th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, blocks from the Missing Soldiers Office Museum, a lonely old obelisk has stood tall since 1909. Today, the organization that the memorial honors is mostly forgotten. A lingering handful […]
Fall brings changing leaves and, for some, an appetite for visiting graveyards. Holidays like Halloween and Day of the Dead inspire us to walk among these final resting places. Clara Barton passed away in her Glen Echo, Maryland, home on April 12, 1912. Her body was transported to North Oxford, Massachusetts, where […]
At the outbreak of the Civil War, the lives of two government workers in Washington, D.C., ran parallel. The two would share space and their lives nearly converge but they would never cross. One was a woman from Massachusetts, the headstrong daughter of an old army officer who had secured a job […]
Sergeant James W. Armstrong went “missing-in-action” in October 1863 during the Battle of Philadelphia, Tenn., according to his service record. This husband and father seemed to have disappeared from the battlefield. His family, unsure of his whereabouts, reached out to Clara Barton in 1865 to find answers. They would find closure in […]
On September 16, 1862, Clara Barton arrived in Sharpsburg, Maryland, in the vicinity of the Army of the Potomac. A battle loomed. It was here that Clara would experience what soldiers on both sides referred to as “seeing the elephant”; a first time in combat. She spent the night near Ambrose Burnside’s […]
In the late summer months of 1862, the small hamlet of Fairfax Station, Virginia, was temporarily flooded with thousands of wounded soldiers brought from two nearby battles, The Second Battle of Manassas, fought August 28-30, 1862, and the Battle of Chantilly on September 1, 1862. Clara Barton, in her steadfast determination to […]
On August 9, 1862, in Culpeper County, Va., Union General Nathaniel P. Banks’ corps clashed with Confederate forces under General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Initially, Union troops gained the upper hand, pushing back Jackson’s men, but a Confederate counterattack, reinforced by A.P. Hill’s division, turned the tide. The Union line collapsed, retreating toward Culpeper. The battle left more than 3,600 […]
Tune in THIS SUNDAY, July 20, when CBS Sunday Morning features the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum in Washington, D.C. The Emmy Award-winning program, hosted by Jane Pauley, airs on CBS at 9:00 a.m. ET, and the full episode becomes available for streaming on the CBS News app at 11:00 a.m. ET. CBS correspondent […]
