Clara Barton and the Missing Soldiers Office: Meeting a Desperate Need for Information

“I was fascinated to learn the site was discovered in 1996, saved by a government worker who was preparing the site for demolition when he discovered historical documents in the attic!”

Recognizing a need for information and meeting it.

In the course of our tour following the footsteps of Clara Barton, my admiration for her courage, confidence, and strength in character—yes, fortitude is the word that comes to mind—continues to grow. A trip to the Missing Soldiers Office Museum in Washington, D.C., has only added further confirmation of Barton’s character.

Early in 1865, as the American Civil War drew to a close, over 3 million men had fought, half a million died, with almost as many wounded. From a small boarding house on 7th Street in  Washington, D.C., Clara Barton had been responding to those in need. In the course of her visits to military camps and hospitals to provide nursing care and other types of material support for the wounded, she had noticed bags of unread letters, many of them asking for any bit of information on the injury or death of a loved one.

Realizing that there was no process in place to document missing and dead soldiers, Barton approached General William Hoffman to endorse a plan to travel to Camp Parole in Annapolis to post notices in the barracks asking for information on missing soldiers. General Grant’s endorsement followed soon after. Barton wrote to President Abraham Lincoln asking that a government office be assigned to respond to handwritten requests for information about missing loved ones, which was granted. She traveled back to Washington, D.C., and with her own funding established the Bureau of Records of Missing Men of the Armies of the United States. A simple sign hung on the door without formality, reading simply: “Missing Soldiers Office.”

Here Clara Barton worked tirelessly on this project for four years, receiving over 150 letters a day, gathering every record of soldier names from prisons and burials that she could locate. She established a classification system, and with a team of clerks published and distributed over 20,000 copies of Rolls of Missing Men, in the process identifying over 22,000 missing soldiers and connecting over 6,000 soldiers and families.

The Missing Soldiers Office

Today’s Missing Soldiers Office, located in a small, discreet, brick building, is very much like it was left. Missing is the beehive of workers desperately seeking to connect loved ones with each other. The entrance is a slight door, glass on top, wood on the bottom, and three brick stairs up from the sidewalk level.

Like a time capsule.

I felt like I had entered an 1865 time capsule as I visualized the context of Clara’s arrival at her 7th Street home and office. She arrived after a period spent caring for wounded soldiers from the battlefields, and did not forget the many men who were lost in the turbulence of the war and the anguish in the hearts of those who loved them and wondered whether they were alive or dead.

Amazingly, the office was not rediscovered until 1996, when it was saved by a government worker who was preparing the site for demolition after he discovered historical documents in the attic! At the time, I was deep into my nursing career, living overseas and volunteering with the American Red Cross in a well-care and immunization clinic for military dependents. I could not help wondering as I entered the building what would have happened if no one had explored the attic and no one had discovered Clara Barton’s third-floor office and responded with an effort to preserve this crucial piece of history.

Standing in the humble physical space where so much important work was done was crucial in helping me understand the fortitude required to exchange over 63,000 letters and locate nearly 22,000 men in just over three years.

Achieving what the mind conceives.

It is remarkable to me that one person, Clara Barton, not only understood the agony it would cause a family to not know if their sons were alive, in a prison camp, badly wounded, or even dead—but also took action. She achieved what her mind conceived, even when resources were scarce and the challenge was daunting. Was it the family love and care she had as a child? Was it the strong commitment she shared with her brothers? Was it the courage she cultivated to overcome her fearful and anxious nature during childhood that motivated Clara’s actions? I will never know for sure.

But I ponder the one thing we do know for sure. Clara Barton, as they say, did not waste a good crisis. Overcome with exhaustion, severely weakened in body, Clara was sent to Europe for rest and recovery after her work with the Missing Soldiers Office, and later went on to create the American Red Cross.

Contemplating fortitude and nursing today.

Fortitude: The strength of mind that enables a person to face danger, pain, and adversity with courage. If anyone ever asks me for an example of fortitude, the example is Clara Barton. The Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum was a powerful reminder for me of the impact one person with fortitude can have on people all over the world. I’d like to think her as a role model for today’s nurses. The nurse shows up, the nurse responds to the needs of others, the nurse is fair and just, and the nurse cares.  Thank you for being our role model, Clara Barton!

Cynthia A. Leaver, PhD, APRN, FNP-BC, FAANP serves as director of academic nursing development at the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN). Before joining AACN, Cynthia taught nursing for over 10 years at the graduate and undergraduate levels and practiced as a family nurse practitioner. She began her intermittent relationship volunteering with the American Red Cross in the 4th grade. Cynthia aided the American Red Cross for three years practicing as a nurse practitioner at the Stuttgart Army Health Clinic in Germany while stationed there with her naval aviator husband.