Miss Clara Barton. Female portrait of American Civil War time by Mathew Brady.

Clara Barton, (December 25, 1821 – April 12, 1912), founder the American Red Cross, declared that the war put the American woman “at least fifty years in advance of the normal position which continued peace would have assigned her.” Clara Barton was born in North Oxford. When Clara was 10, she assigned herself the task of nursing her brother David back to health after he fell from the roof of a barn. Clara learned how to distribute the prescribed medication to her brother, as well as how to place leeches on his body to bleed him (a standard treatment at this time). She continued to care for David long after doctors had given until he made a full recovery. She was a teacher for 12 years at schools in Canada, West Georgia and at open a free school in Bordentown, NJ which was the first ever free school in New Jersey. She was also a patent clerk in Washington D.C., in the US Patent Office. She was the first woman in government office who had received a salary equal to a man's salary. She became a hospital nurse during the American Civil War. Nursing education was not formalized at that time and Clara did not attend nursing school and provided self-taught nursing care. On April 19, 1861, the Baltimore Riot resulted in the first bloodshed of the American Civil War. Victims were transported to Washington D.C. where she lived at the time. Barton went to the railroad station when the victims arrived and nursed 40 men providing crucial assistance to wounded.

Historical encounters of organizations set up to provide help and raise money for those in need.

Mathew B. Brady (May 18, 1822 – January 15, 1896) was one of the first American photographers, best known for his scenes of the Civil War. He studied under inventor Samuel F. B. Morse, who pioneered the daguerreotype technique in America. Brady opened his own studio in New York in 1844, and photographed Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams, among other celebrities. When the Civil War started, his use of a mobile studio and darkroom enabled vivid battlefield photographs that brought home the reality of war to the public. Thousands of war scenes were captured, as well as portraits of generals and politicians on both sides of the conflict, though most of these were taken by his assistants, rather than by Brady himself. After the war, these pictures went out of fashion, and the government did not purchase the master-copies, as he had anticipated. Brady’s fortunes declined sharply, and he died in debt. From The U.S. National Archives collection. The U.S. National Archives was established in 1934 by President Franklin Roosevelt, but its major holdings date back to 1775. The National Archives keeps only those Federal records that are judged to have continuing value -- about 2 to 5 percent of those generated in any given year. By now, they add up to a formidable number, diverse in form as well as in content. In addition to the photographs and graphic images described above, there are approximately 9 billion pages of textual records; 7.2 million maps, charts, and architectural drawings; billions of machine-readable data sets; and more than 365,000 reels of film and 110,000 videotapes. All of these materials are preserved because they are important to the workings of Government, have long-term research worth, or provide information of value to citizens.