Gritty Details About Clara Barton’s Life That Were Left Out Of The Popular Narrative
Most of us have at least a passing knowledge about Clara Barton’s fearless humanitarian work during the turmoil of the Civil War. But many fascinating details from her life and times are much less widely known. We’ve combed through the archives and discovered some intriguing truths about his American heroine. Read on to find out about some extraordinary episodes in Barton’s highly eventful life.
20. Brush with death
Although she worked as a nurse during the Civil War, Barton was never one to stay safe in dressing stations to the rear of the actual battlefields. She was accustomed to getting close to the fighting, where she could treat Union soldiers almost as they fell. One such experience of frontline action came in September 1862 at the bitter Battle of Antietam in Maryland.
A holed sleeve
Arriving at the battlefield, Barton got straight to helping the wounded as the fighting raged around her. At one point, as she was giving one wounded soldier a drink of water, she felt a strange flutter in her sleeve. She quickly realized that a bullet had passed right through the fabric. Not only that, it had killed the man to whom she was tending.
19. Never married
Barton lived to the grand old age of 90, dying in 1912. Although she certainly lived an extraordinary life packed with incident and achievement, there was one thing she never tasted — marriage. This was despite the fact that women of her era were very much expected to marry. Still, that’s not to say that she never experienced the excitement of romance.
John J. Elwell
Barton is said to have had a relationship of some kind with a senior Union officer, Lieutenant Colonel John J. Elwell. That was despite the fact that Elwell was a married man. How far this affair went is a matter of speculation. In a letter written years later by Elwell he said that, “[he had loved her] all the law allows (and a little more besides).” So it’s left to us to guess the exact nature of their relationship.
