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JAKE WYNN

speaks about

"Clara Barton's Missing Soldiers Office"

About the Topic:
In the aftermath of the Civil War, relief organizer and volunteer nurse Clara Barton opened the Missing Soldiers Office to search for missing Union soldiers. From her boardinghouse at 437 7th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., she launched an operation that scoured the nation for information about soldiers who had disappeared during the conflict. In three years, Barton and her team discovered the fate of more than 22,000 missing men.  Yet, Barton's work with the Missing Soldiers Office was largely overshadowed by her role with the American Red Cross.

In 1996, Richard Lyons, an employee of the General Services Administration (GSA), and his partner were on a routine inspection of a rundown building slated for demolition. While exploring the third floor, Richard felt something (or someone) tap his shoulder. He turned around and saw an envelope hanging out of the slats of the ceiling.

The envelope, addressed to Edward Shaw, was clearly very old and caught Lyons’ interest. He grabbed a ladder in order to explore the attic and see what else might be lurking there.

What Lyons found was a treasure trove of artifacts—over a thousand objects in all. Among them was a sign that read “Missing Soldiers Office, Office 3rd Story Room 9, Miss Clara Barton.” These were the rooms where Clara Barton had lived and worked during the Civil War.

Lyons’ discovery sparked two decades of hard work and collaboration to save the building and turn it into the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum.

Behind the modern facade of the Boyce and Lewis shoe store lurked the incredible story of Clara Barton’s post-war efforts.  This photograph shows how the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office appeared for most of the 20th century: a modern shoe store, no visible brick, let alone any clue of Clara Barton's activities inside the building.  Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The third floor rooms had gone unchanged for almost a hundred years. In 1911, reactions to the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire ushered in a new wave of fire safety legislation. At the time, rather than pay to get the entire building up to code, the landlord simply boarded up the third floor and continued to rent the first two floors as commercial and professional spaces. While the stores below occasionally used the third floor for extra storage, the rooms went both unaltered and uncared for until Lyons discovered them. The GSA worked with experts and artisans to restore the third floor to how Clara would have seen it.

In 2007, the National Museum of Civil War Medicine (NMCWM) partnered with the GSA. While the GSA owns the building, the NMCWM runs the museum.

In July 2015, the museum officially opened to the public. Visitors will have the opportunity to take a guided tour through the preserved rooms where they will discover how Miss Clarissa Barton, Patent Office employee, became the Clara Barton, a household name and the “Angel of the Battlefield.”

The presentation by Jake Wynn will cover the life and efforts of Clara Barton and the discovery of the Missing Soldiers Office and the events to preserve the Office that is now open to the public as a museum.  

SOURCE:  For more information about the museum, visit https://www.clarabartonmuseum.org/

About the Speaker:
Jake Wynn is the Director of Interpretation at the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum and the National Museum of Civil War Medicine.

He is a 2015 graduate of Hood College in Frederick, Maryland, where he focused on public history and communications. Previously, Mr.Wynn worked with the Heart of the Civil War Heritage Area, the Tourism Council of Frederick County (MD), and Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park.

He writes independently on the history of Pennsylvania's Anthracite Coal Region on his blog, Wynning History.

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