Read Part One HERE
In this post I will focus on a woman named Clara Barton. She lived from 1821 - 1912.
Clara was the youngest of Stephen and Sarah Barton's five children. Her father was a prosperous farmer. As a teenager, Clara helped care for her seriously ill brother - her first experience as a nurse.
Clara's family directed their painfully shy daughter to become a teacher upon the recommendation of a renowed phrenologist L.N. Fowler, who examined her as a girl. She began teaching at 18, founded a school for workers' children at her brother's mill when she was 24, and after moving to Bordentown, New Jersey, established the first free school there in 1852. She resigned when she discovered that the school had hired a man at twice her salary, saying she would never work for less than a man.
In 1854 she was hired as a recording clerk at the US Patent Office in Washington, DC, the first woman to be appointed to such a post. She was paid, the same salary as her male colleagues. However, the following year, Secretary of the Interior, Robert McClelland, who opposed women working in the government, reduced her to copyist with a lower salary. In 1857, the Buchanan Administration eliminated her position entirely, but in 1860, she returned as a copyist after the election of President Abraham Lincoln.
P.S. I will continue the story of Clara Barton in my next post.
Read Part Ten HERE
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