Clara Barton

As a child, Clara Barton did farm and household chores on the family’s North Oxford, Massachusetts farm. Caring for her bedridden brother David and sick neighbors prepared Barton for nursing during the Civil War. She also did bookkeeping in the family mill, operated looms, and tutored the workers’ children.

At 17, Barton became a teacher in North Oxford, MA. In Bordentown, NJ, she established the state’s first free public school. Civil War and American Red Cross's work followed. Barton later established the American Red Cross’s Department of First Aid for the Injured. It taught basic emergency preparedness and first aid care to lay people.

After resigning from the American Red Cross in 1904, Barton organized The National First Aid Association of America. This program taught emergency preparedness and first aid response to the masses. Barton noted that “the work of the association will be along the same lines as those followed by the Red Cross Society, except that it will deal with smaller rather than the great calamities of life.” She affirmed, “It is a deplorable weakness of a great people, that they do not know how, in an emergency, to care for the injured.” “The first aid is something to which everyone should belong. Everyday in shops & mills there is some horrible accident, & if there is somebody on hand who knew just what to do & how to act, a great deal of good might be done.”

Mill, factory and railroad workers attended First Aid Association lectures. Classes were conducted at YMCAs and public schools. Fire brigades received training. It was a valuable community service program. Although the American Red Cross originally snubbed the program, by 1910, it offered classes. Barton saw no benefit in competing with the American Red Cross and declared, “It must grow. I want it to, it is my planting. I should rejoice the crop no matter who harvests it.” The American Red Cross still provides this training today.