The Birthday of Eternity

Clara Barton, died April 12, 1912

"You must never so much as think whether you like it or not, whether it is bearable or not; you must never think of anything except the need, and how to meet it."

Barton's last major field relief operation as President of the American Red Cross was helping victims of the Galveston hurricane in September 1900. The storm left 6,000 dead.  In a two-month period, the Red Cross distributed $120,000 worth of money and supplies.  The operation also established an orphanage for children. 

Aftermath of Hurricane in Galveston, Texas

By 1900, Barton had moved the Red Cross headquarters from downtown Washington to Glen Echo, Maryland. There she built a large structure on her own property for offices, storage facilities and her personal living space. 

Red Cross Headquarters in Glen Echo, Maryland

In May, 1902, Barton led the U.S. delegation to the Seventh International Conference of the Red Cross in St. Petersburg, Russia.  She was presented the Silver Cross of Imperial Russia, the nation's highest civilian honor, by Czar Nicholas II in memory of her famine relief work in Russia in 1892. 

Barton in St. Petersburg, 1902

Barton continued to live at her Glen Echo home even after giving up the Red Cross presidency in 1904, as criticism arose of her management, plus her advancing age.  Barton resigned as president in 1904, at the age of 83.

During her last years she summered in a house she bought in North Oxford and continued to attend suffrage conventions and veterans' encampments.  Barton enjoyed good health and remained quite active, riding her horse and keeping abreast of current events.

Clara Barton published several books about the beginnings of the American Red Cross and the global Red Cross network. She also wrote The Story of My Childhood, which was published in 1907; it was intended as one of a series of short autobiographies detailing aspects of her life which she never completed. 

On April 12, 1912, at the age of  90, she died at her home in Glen Echo, Maryland, where she had spent the last 15 years of year life.  She died with her brother and friends by her side. The cause of death was tuberculosis, which she had contracted two years earlier and with which she had been bedridden for a month.

She was buried in the Barton family plot in North Cemetery in Oxford, Massachusetts.

  

 In 1975, the Clara Barton National Historic Site in Glen Echo was established by the National Park Service at Barton's home. One of the first National Historic Sites dedicated to the accomplishments of a woman, it preserves the early history of the American Red Cross, since the house also served as an early headquarters of the organization.

Barton Home in Glen Echo, Maryland

"Suffering people would look upon her as the light of a great soul that had come to them out of the darkness, bringing comfort and healing and the calm spirit that banishes all fear."