Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum

Please join us Saturday, July 26 in celebrating the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office’s 10th birthday!

Author, historian, and first-person Clara Barton interpreter Carolyn Ivanoff will be presenting a special lecture detailing Clara Barton’s work throughout the Civil War and her development of the Missing Soldiers Office.

Miss Clara Barton was known as the Angel of the Battlefield for her service as a nurse and relief worker during the Civil War.   In March of 1865, with written permission from President Lincoln, Barton established the Missing Soldiers Office in her boarding house on 7th Street in Washington, D.C.  As the Civil War was coming to a close, over 40 percent of the dead remained unidentified.  Tens of thousands of grieving families did not know the fate of their loved ones.  From the time she first went onto the battlefield Barton was acutely aware, and deeply concerned, for the fate of the men whom she cared for and their families.  With the opening of the Missing Soldiers’ Office, Barton dedicated herself to the search for the missing and the identification of the dead.  By time the office closed in 1868, Barton had worked herself into exhaustion.   More than 22,000 unknown dead had been identified, 13,000 at Andersonville alone.