For fifteen years a wonderful nurse had to quit teaching. Her name was Clara Barton. She had to quit her fifteen years to nurse throat ailments. So she moved to Washington, D.C. in 1854 and became the first female clerk in the U.S. Patent Office until 1861.

When the Civil War had come Clara was terrified at how much food the soldiers got, so in between her working as a nurse, she had gotten herself a job by baking pies for the soldiers. By 1862, Clara had received a pass to nurse wounded men, she also received the name "Angel of battlefield."

After the war was end with (in 1865) Clara made a search for all missing soldiers. Everything during the war made Clara exhausted, and she went to Switzerland to learn about the Red Cross. The other nurses that helped Clara gave Clara a decorated Christmas tree for her 50th birthday.

When Clara returned to the U.S.A in 1873, she tried making a Geneva Convention, when she did she became president of the Red Cross for 23 years.

Clara spent her last years in Glen Echo, Maryland. She studied and read books on astrology and faith for healing as well as tending her garden. Clara was always single and died of double pneumonia on April 13,1912, at her age of 93 years old.