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“G. Bubenzer” was added to Clara Barton’s “Roll of Missing Men” with only #6647 and “Hospital Steward” in his listing. It may seem odd that a hospital worker would go missing. It’s often the combat soldiers and field staff that disappear – or the wounded left unaccounted for during muster. Was it […]
In 1866, New Jersey became the last Northern state to officially abolish slavery. Decades of a “modified” institution allowed for a slow gradual emancipation process and a transitional status from enslaved to “apprenticed for life.” This delay did not inhibit enslaved and free populations from enlisting in the Union Army.[1] Private Joseph […]
On December 18, 1865, following the ratification of the 13th Amendment, President Andrew Johnson addressed the United States Senate. He declared: I have the honor to state that the rebellion waged by a portion of the people against the properly constituted authority of the Government of the United States has been suppressed; […]
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 […]
