Our second presentation this morning is by jake wynn. Jake is a director of interpretation of the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office museum. Also the National Museum of civil war medicine. He worked on a number of civil war related jobs and in fredericksburg and spotsylvania. This talk is entitled discovering Clara Bartons missing Soldiers Office. Mr. Wynn. Thank you very much. Hello everybody. Good morning. I am so excited to be here this morning, talking about something i am very passionate about. The story of clara barton and her role during the american civil war. I am the director of interpretation at the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office and museum and the National Museum of civil war medicine. I will explain how that connection works in just a bit. I wanted to introduce what i am going to be discussing today. Can we see a show of hands, how many of you have heard of the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office museum before . How many have been there . Excellent. I am glad to see some hands in the audience. Thank you for coming. For those of you who have heard of the museum before, i hope you will come and visit. I hope the rest of you will be excited about coming to visit the museum in the near future. What i am going to accomplish today with our presentation is two tracts. We will tell different stories that are tied together. They could not exist without each other. We have the story of clara barton, the angel of the battlefield who is doing incredible work during the civil war as a relief worker, volunteering as a nurse on the battlefield. In the aftermath, she will spearhead the effort to look for missing Union Soldiers. Then we will talk about the history of the building in which she lived during the civil war. A boardinghouse structure in downtown washington, d. C. They have a picture of the exterior right here. The building in which she lived and worked during the civil war which is now the sight of the missing Soldiers Office museum. Her boardinghouse where she lived is about two blocks from pennsylvania avenue on 7th street. About two blocks from the national archives. Close to capital one arena. She is right there and what is now known as the penn quarter neighborhood. Those are the elements we are going to look at. The role of clara barton during the civil war and the history of the building in which she lived. The connection between barton in the space she lived is going to lead to the space being saved from destruction in the 1990s. I am lucky to be working in this space in downtown washington, a restored 19thcentury boardinghouse. If it were not for the connections of clara barton, it is likely that structure would no longer exist. I will get into that story in just a bit. What i want to do first is go through a bit of the life of clara barton, the angel of the battlefield. We are going to look at her life from the beginning up to her time at the missing Soldiers Office in washington, d. C. The first 45 years of her life. If you are familiar with clara barton, you are most familiar with her work with the American Red Cross, which comes several decades after the civil war. I will tie that in as well but we will not focus on that element. We will focus specifically on her civil war experience. This is a picture of Young Clarissa barton. She was born in massachusetts in december 1821. Her family was middleclass, farmers that end up owning mills in this town in central massachusetts. She is the youngest child of the family. She is going to grow up a very shy child, much more comfortable with animals than people. She would oftentimes go riding off into the countryside. That is where she was most comfortable. This is important for those of you that know little bit about her civil war nursing experience. Clara barton has no nurse training before she goes into civil war. In america, the nursing trade as we know it did not exist. She is not going to have formal trading training before she goes on to the battlefield where she goes to supply soldiers with medical attention and medical supplies. Barton instead is going to have one experience as a child where she is going to provide firstaid. She has an older brother who falls off a roof when clara is 11 years of age. A local doctor comes by and says it was likely that stephen would die of his injuries. Young clara decides this cannot be. She will spend the next few weeks nursing him back to health, at his bedside every day. No training but just a Natural Healing touch to help others. That skill set is going to follow her the rest of her life. She is also very smart and she does well in school. As she is comingofage in the 1830s, she is going to have some decisions to make. She does not have many options in terms of what she can do as a single woman, living in the early 19th century in massachusetts or anywhere. She does not have marriage prospects. Clara barton will never marry. But she is going to decide that she is going to go into the workforce. She is going to go out there and search for work. When she is doing that as a middleclass woman of propriety in the early 19th century, she essentially has one option. Because she is very well educated, she can go into the teaching profession. This photo is taken when clara barton is a teacher in massachusetts. They had a very progressive Education System at the time. They believed that in a democracy, citizens should need to be educated. They need to have an understanding of reading, writing and mathematics and civics. That is what clara barton gets herself into in massachusetts as an educator. One of the elements of her life that she will fight against for the rest of her 90 plus years is inequality. When she goes into the workforce as an educator in massachusetts, one of the first thing she comes up against is pay inequality. One of the best quotes at our store up in washington, we have a mug with this quote on it. I may sometimes work for free but i will never do a mans work for less than a mans pay. She says that in the 1830s. Experiencing inequality between the sexes that she will deal with for the rest of her life. In education, she will never be able to escape it. She becomes a well respected educator in massachusetts. She will then go and get graduate studies in new york where she continues to grow a social network that is going to be helpful for her later on when she transitions into a creek into a career as a human at terrien. As a humanitarian. Comparing Massachusetts Education to new jersey education is apples and oranges in the 19th century. Massachusetts was very public was very progressive. New jersey did not have that. The small school that barton starts in the early 1850s is one of the first free schools, free Public Education schools in the state of new jersey. She goes in and starts off with a group of students, probably less than a dozen. By the end of her first year she is able to convince enough people in this town that Public Education is a great idea. By the end of the first year they have more than 600 students enrolled in their school system. Barton is then she falls very ill and gets laryngitis. She cannot speak, she cannot teach. She takes a vacation, comes back and they have built a new school, but the school board of this town has decided in order for their school to be a success, they needed have they need to have a male principal. She is then going to become very angry about this and decide to leave Public Education forever. Now we are in the early 1850s. Barton is looking around for what she is going to do. An opportunity is going to come to her from washington, d. C. Keep in mind in the early to mid 19th century, a single woman traveling alone is a radical thing. Barton is going to be on the cutting edge of changing, allowing women to travel around the country essentially at will, go where they need to go without an escort. Without a brother, husband or father. Barton is going to travel to washington in the early 1850s because she is pursuing a new opportunity. She has heard that an office in washington of the federal government is hiring. She will end up working for the Patent Office. The Patent Office is located in this building. For those of you who have been to the missing Soldiers Office, the neighborhood of penn quarter where the office is located, you have seen this building and make and may have even gone inside. It is now the american portrait gallery. Barton goes to work there in the early 1850 these and becomes a clerk at the Patent Office 1850s and becomes a clerk at the Patent Office. Working in the same office, men and women working together, sidebyside is mind blowing for people in the 1850s. She is going to have that job and make about the same amount of money as her male counterparts, the other clerks in her office. Barton is going to continue with that job for several years, living in different boarding houses in washington, d. C. Before politics is going to get involved. 1856, James Buchanan is elected president. I saw a book that says James Buchanan, worst president ever . The only president from pennsylvania, so i apologize to all of you. With the election of James Buchanan, he comes into office and all women, a handful of them in the Patent Office at the time, are expelled from the Patent Office. They are forced out. Barton loses her job, the salary she had been making. She is given the option that she can do copy work. She would have to work from home and she would not get a salary but instead get paid per page copied. You could sit up copying patent documents 24 hours a day and she could never make up the amount of money she was making before. Living in d. C. In the later part of the 1850s is not an option for barton. She will leave washington and live with family. She will also travel around the nation. It is going to be the election of Abraham Lincoln and his inauguration that is going to bring clara barton back to washington, d. C. When she comes back in the spring of 1861, she is thrown into the middle of the conflict that is taking over the country at that point, especially in washington, d. C. This is the bestknown image of barton. This is what she looked like during the civil war years. One of the biggest misnomers about clara barton, barton was 39 when the war broke out. For me that was a surprise because the vision we have of women working, especially as nurses, they tend to be very young. Pop culture has helped to establish that as well. For any of you who have seen mercy stream mercy street, we see a lot of very young nurses. Barton is 39 when the war breaks out. She is moving back into washington, d. C. Trying to get her job back at the Patent Office. Barton is thrown out of the office in 1857. They accuse her of being a black republican. Now what they quote black republican in office in 1861, barton is going to try and get her job back. It is events outside the city that out that are going to throw barton into work during the civil war. One of those events is going to take place just a few miles northeast of washington, d. C. , in downtown baltimore. In 1861, after the bombardment of fort sumter virginia which is looking like it may secede from the union. He needs soldiers to defend the city. He calls out those 75,000 men. They are told to go to washington. In order to get to washington they have two options. They can take steamers and go around fortress monroe and up the Chesapeake Bay or the river. Or they can go by land utilizing the Railroad Network that comes into washington. That is what most of the soldiers going into washington are going to do. The problem with that is there is no direct rail link between baltimore, say philadelphia, new york and washington, d. C. Everything has to go to baltimore and change trains. Soldiers who are assembling and preparing to go to washington, when they get to baltimore, they have to get out of there trains, walk a mile through downtown baltimore to the next train station. Baltimore was the most rapidly secessionist part of the state of maryland. Many of the citizens of baltimore were not pleased to see troops in union blue marching through their city. On april 19th, a group of massachusetts soldiers from the sixth massachusetts militia going to be attacked on the streets of baltimore. In total, 4 massachusetts men are killed or mortally wounded. More than 10 civilians are killed. It ends up becoming a freeforall in the streets of baltimore. This is the first true bloodshed of the civil war where you have soldiers on combatants on both sides bleeding on the streets. What happens with these massachusetts men, they get on the train and make it to washington. They show up bloodied, defeated but the news of what happened to them in baltimore is going to get there before they do. As they arrive in washington at the train depot, citizens of washington have come out to greet them including clara barton. She shows up at the rail platform. Many of them have been wounded. She jumps into action trying to help them. When she does that, she is trying to help bind up wounds and bring dressings and other things they can use, she recognizes them. Some of the men of the militia were from her hometown. In some cases she had actually been there teacher. She has instant kinship and she follows them on their march to their first encampment. There are no barracks for these men. Instead they put them into Government Office buildings and other government owned buildings in the city. Barton goes with them. She is going to talk with these men about their experiences in baltimore. She actually sits in the Vice President s chair at the front of the senate and holds court with them. She realizes the these men have nothing of what they need to fight this war. Many of them have not been given weapons. They have no other uniforms other than what they are wearing. They dont have food, utensils. Many of them dont have camp equipment. What barton realizes is the u. S. Army is not prepared for this conflict. Barton decides she is going to do something about it. She will start to gather supplies and she will do it at her boarding house in washington, d. C. She turns her room into a store room, filling it with supplies. So much so that by the end of the year, she is going to have to rent three warehouses in washington in order to fill them in order to hold all the supplies she had been given. She asks friends, family, supporters of her, friends she made when she was teaching, please send supplies to me and i will distribute them to union troops. The problem she will face is in the second year of the war, we are still dealing with issues of what is a womans proper place during this conflict . In 1861, you see the start of women in the nursing trade. It is still difficult for women to find access to the front lines, to go and provide assistance where the battles are taking place. Barton is on the cutting edge of that. She has three warehouses full of supplies but nowhere to take them. She goes repeatedly to the United States army, asking for a pass to leave the city. At that time unit you needed a military pass. Barton is repeatedly refused as she goes to try and get those passes. It is not until the summer of 1862 when the war is going so badly, just after the seven days battle, when barton is going to be able to get access to the battlefield, when she is able to convince the u. S. Army Quartermaster Department that she has the supplies and is willing to give them to the soldiers who need the most but she has one condition and that is that she takes the supplies. When she does that, she gets onto the battlefield. Cedar mountain, second bull run, chantilly. She sees the aftermath of battle in those cases, nurses the wounded and provides first aid to soldiers on the battlefield but does not see battle herself. September 1860 two, the Bloodiest Day in American History at antietam when barton is going to go on the battlefield the first time. She takes three wagons and loads them up with bandages and other medical supplies. She takes them to the battlefield, driving her team of army mules with a number of different drivers helping her. They take this wagon train to the front. She arrives at a firstquarter Field Hospital and she singlehandedly resupplied that hospital. She was at the hospital closest to the fighting in an area known as the cornfield, the bloodiest part of the antietam battle and she is going to singlehandedly resupplied that hospital and provide first Aid Assistance as well. She is so close to the fighting antietam, this is some of the most famous stories of her battlefield work are going to take place. Giving a drink of water to a soldier near the Field Hospital waiting for medical attention. She is leaning down and giving him a drink of water when a bullet goes through the sleeve of her dress and hits the man in the face, killing him instantly in her arms. She lets him down and moves on to the next. Later down that line, she is asked by a shoulder by a soldier who was shot in the supplies. When she does that, she gets onto the battlefield. Cedar mountain, second bull run, chantilly. She sees the aftermath of battle in those cases, nurses the wounded and provides first aid to soldiers on the battlefield but does not see battle itself. September 1860 two, the Bloodiest Day in American History at antietam when barton is going to go on the battlefield the first time. She takes three wagons and loads them up with bandages and other medical supplies. She takes them to the battlefield, driving her team of army mules with a number of different drivers helping her. They take this wagon train to the front. She arrives at a firstquarter Field Hospital and she singlehandedly resupplied that hospital. She was at the hospital closest to the fighting in an area known as the cornfield, the bloodiest part of the antietam battle and she is going to singlehandedly resupplied that hospital and provide first Aid Assistance as well. She is so close to the fighting antietam, this is some of the most famous stories of her battlefield work are going to take place. Giving a drink of water to a soldier near the Field Hospital waiting for medical attention. She is leaning down and giving him a drink of water when a bullet goes through the sleeve of her dress and hits the man in the face, killing him instantly in her arms. She lets him down and moves on to the next. Later down that line, she is asked by a shoulder by a soldier who was shot in the face, he asks her to perform minor surgery to cut the bullet out of his face, which she does. She is there for 72 hours, and then she goes home back to washington, d. C. And begins the process of rebuilding the supplies she had. There is a surgeon at antietam who will write a letter home to his wife in the weeks after the battle to tell of Clara Bartons role in the battle and after. He was already familiar with her before she arrived at antietam but she right but he writes this letter home to his wife and calls her the angel of the battlefield. That letter gets published in newspapers across the north and is the first time people are introduced to clara barton. Barton she will can barton will continue to do this for the rest of the war. She will go to South Carolina in 1863. On the battlefield at fort wegner in july of 1863. In 1864, she comes back up into the virginia theater, sees the aftermath of the wilderness, nursing again in fredericksburg in fredericksburg. She ends up taking over a hospital in petersburg in the summer of 1864. In 1865 as the war is drawing to a close, barton is going to find her next role. She is a woman who deals with depression throughout her life. It runs in her family. Her mother had issues of depression as well. Barton by 1865 is out of things to do to help. The battles have moved farther south. The war has drawn to a close. She is in annapolis, maryland. She finds a new role where survivors prompt from prison camps are brought back into union lines. This is where paroled Union Prisoners are brought and integrated back into the union army as well as any medical attention they need, that sort of thing. Barton is there and is providing assistance to those soldiers being brought in from places like andersonville. She sees these men coming off the boat in 1865 and is horrified, understandably so. She also begins to hear word of the many thousands of men who have not survived andersonville. More than 13,000. What she realizes is that the army has no way of notifying families of what happened to their loved ones. Men out on the battlefield during the war, if they are shot or wounded or killed in action, the u. S. Army has no mechanism of informing those families of what happened. Instead it falls on the officers or enlisted men in the individual units. This is in the age before dogtags or formal government identification. If a soldier should die on the battlefield and no one knows where he is or what happened to him, he ends up in an unknown grave and his family has no idea what happened. The same goes for prison. These men go into prison camps, die in droves and no one informs the family. They may know from newspapers that parts of their unit was captured but they have no contact during these prison camps. That is going to lead to a major crisis when andersonville is ultimately emptied out and begin to come back into union lines. They are telling horror stories, saying conditions were atrocious and that men died by the thousands. Barton realizes that she has a job to do, a role to fill. She can be the one to inform these families. She begins the work of what becomes known as the missing Soldiers Office. In february 1865, she starts a correspondence with the folks around Abraham Lincoln trying to get approval for her office to inform these families. In march she does successfully get approval in order to start the work of the missing Soldiers Office to begin looking for soldiers but also informing families of what happened to their loved ones. Barton is going to run into a lot of problems as she is doing this. She is never able to meet with Abraham Lincoln facetoface. She goes to the white house on two occasions but is unable to meet with him. The war is wrapping up and the beginning of reconstruction is looming. She has powerful friends in washington. One of them is named henry wilson, a very powerful senator on capitol hill from massachusetts. Barton writes to henry wilson and talks with him and is able to get communications to president lincoln saying what barton wants to do and ultimately in march of 1865, he does give approval for barton to begin work on the missing Soldiers Office. A press release goes out saying that families of missing Union Soldiers, please write to clara barton in washington, d. C. With information about your loved one. One. Name, state, what unit they fought with, any other identifying information. That information will then be gathered by the missing Soldiers Office and, ultimately, then distributed back out to the families if there is any news provided to them. When barton initially tries this, when she starts, she is not convinced that this is going to be a big effort. In fact her brother passes away at this time. She goes to massachusetts to deal with final disposition of his body and his estate. It takes about a week and when she comes back to washington, she finds more than 300 letters from families in a weeks time. She realizes there is a desperate need for someone to look for these soldiers. The work begins in earnest at the missing Soldiers Office. This office going to occupy the same space were she had been living in 1861 to 1865, her thirdfloor boardinghouse room in washington, d. C. This is a lesserknown image of barton from that time, 1865 as well. She is the one who is going to be the driving force behind searching for missing Union Soldiers. No one else is doing this work except for barton. This office is going to turn into, unlike what she thought from the beginning, an operation that will last for three years and ultimately absorb most of her efforts and a lot of her health over the next three years, searching for these soldiers. But this is the situation shes dealing with. This is a harpers weekly illustration in the years after the war, where you have families desperately looking for their loved ones. In this case you have a family able to find their loved ones, able to find the battlefield grave where the soldier has been buried. For the vast majority of those whose loved ones had gone missing during the war, they will not have this image. They will not have this solace. They are sinking some seeking simply that they cannot find a body, find a grave, they are simply looking for closure. That is what barton will ultimately be looking to do. Provide closure for these families. This is how shes going to do it. So, when those families right to the missing Soldiers Office, the washington, d. C. , they will be giving information, name, unit, state the soldier came from. The information is ultimately going to be published on one of these lists. This is whats known as a role of missing men. This information would be compiled and then sent back out to northern cities, to northern towns, printed newspapers, put up on public bulletin boards. The idea was, when this information would be sent out to the country, there is a small note attached that says for anyone who may recognize the name on this list and know what happened to them, please write to the missing Soldiers Office, miss clara barton, 488 and a half 7th street. The information would be compiled and ultimately sent on to the family to give those families some form of closure. Ultimately, this is what we believe the office to have looked like at the time. There were no photographs taken or illustrations made of the office. Ultimately it takes up the entire front of the first floor of this building, she expands out from her single boardinghouse room to take over what were three boardinghouse rooms on the front of this building. In total shes going to end up hiring more than 10 clerks for this job. Now, hiring those 10 clerks, paying for all of these printing costs, one of the most commonly asked questions is how did she afford this . The same with her civil war work. Shes not independently wealthy, she doesnt have a large store of money back in massachusetts. But through the war and in the missing Soldiers Office, she depends on what her friends give her, what her family gives her and people wishing her well and wanting her work to go on. She is raising money that way. For the missing Soldiers Office, she does pursue government money, federal money. The Lincoln Administration looks like theyre going to give it to her but lincoln is assassinated in april of 1865 and she has to deal with andrew johnson, who is very lukewarm on the idea, especially because clara barton is a woman running the office. So ultimately he does give approval for her to continue the work, but punts the request for 15,000 to congress. Congress in 1865, Like Congress in 2019, they dont do anything with it. Slow. Ultimately, barton does get the money, the 15,000. But this effort, she fronts the money from what she gets from friends and family members and from those who want her to do this work. She also traveled the country on a speaking tour. She goes across the country and gives a lecture about what it was like to be a woman going to the battlefield. So she is able to, through speaking fees and donations, kabul enough money together to keep the operation going until 1866, when she gets a federal appropriation to give her the money to essentially pay her back for what she has fronted to get the office going. It does begin in 1865. By 1867, most of the work, the easy pickings have been taken. Families have been informed. It gets really, really hard by the end of 1867 to make any new discoveries. But this is ultimately the total. 1865 to 1868 she receives more than 60,000 pieces of correspondence between families. That is more than 100 letters per day coming into her office. In total she is able to find 22,000 missing Union Soldiers. It is ultimately a drop in the bucket in terms of the large number of missing Union Soldiers who essentially disappeared without a trace. And the 13,000 men at andersonville is actually going to be big chunk of this number. Barton does go on the expedition to andersonville in august of 1865 and is there when it becomes a National Cemetery. She is actually the one who first raises the American Flag over the National Cemetery at andersonville. She is able to inform those families of what happened to their loved ones and say for the most part where the men were buried. But this effort completely exhausted her. By 1868, she is in very poor health, barton is, and ultimately she moved out of the boardinghouse in washington and moved briefly to capitol hill before her doctors tell her she needs to take a break and she goes on an extended vacation to europe. In 1869 she goes and stays with actually a family of one of the clerks in the missing Soldiers Office in switzerland. In switzerland, when members of the International Committee of the red cross will meet with her, they want to meet the angel of the battlefield of the american civil war, that is when she first learns about the red cross. She will stay in europe and gets caught in another war, the franco prussian war. There is no rest for the rest of her life. She will get sucked into many conflicts and humanitarian disasters with the American Red Cross that she goes on to found it later in the 19th century. That is when she leaves the space, leaves the boardinghouse in washington, d. C. , and this is what the building winds up looking like in the 20th century. It becomes a shoe store. And this part of washington, this neighborhood here, is very successful, very thriving in the 19th century and early 20th century. A lot of shopping. Across the street taken essentially behind from where this photographer was standing was the site of one of washingtons most Successful Department stores. So, this is a very thriving neighborhood up until about the second world war. After the second world war, white flight from washington, people leaving for the suburbs, the neighborhood falls on hard times and in 1968, just to the north, the left of these photographs, about one mile to the north in the aftermath of the Martin Luther king jr. Assassination, that is where washington burns, including the areas closely in the vicinity of what was the missing Soldiers Office. This building ultimately becomes empty at that point. The shoe store is left vacant and ultimately the federal government, by the 1990s, will come into possession of the building. But the third floor, which you can just see poking out from this absolutely hideous facade, i will show you what the building look like in the 19th century, which is what it looked like now, restored back to its 19thcentury appearance, but what is up there on the third floor, you can see that there are some windows up there, but the third floor in the early 20th century had been left completely vacant. It had no one living in it essentially from the first or second decade of the 1900s right up through the 1990s. It is empty and by the 1990s it looks like this. One of the remarkable things about it is that the third floor never had electricity added to it. Never had water added to it, running water. No telephone service. So, it is fairly pristine in terms of the way it was designed. Its 19th century appearance, though degraded significantly, theres a lot there that can be studied. And the connection to barton over the almost a century after she had left had been lost. No one knows exactly where barton had lived. The addresses changed in washington. All of the living memory, she died in 1912. One of the other tenants, her landlord, i should say, lived until 1914 and when they passed away and the addresses changed, the connection to barton with this space is gone. So this is essentially just like any other empty, vacant 19thcentury building in washington in the 1990s. With the redevelopment of washington at that time, they began making it into a modern city, a lot of these buildings wound up being torn down. That is ultimately what the fate of this building was slated to be. The government had possession of the building. The gsa was essentially the owner of this building in 1996. They were preparing the building for sale. So, one of the gentleman that is going to be going into this building, this guy here. Hes a carpenter named richard lyons. Richard lyons was going into this building the day before thanksgiving, 1996, clearing out the building before the holiday. He had another partner with him. The partner ends up not going to the third floor of the building with him, he did some shopping for the holidays and richard went up the stairs alone. He goes up those stairs, up to the third floor. He hangs a left and comes towards us and walks down the long hallway. Thats what the building looked like at the time, minus a lot of the lights. Hes going in there with a flashlight walking down the hall. Its a spooky, spooky place, in fact he says the places crawling with ghosts. He thought the place was just dripping with them. His story, as i get to it, you will see why. He walks down this big room and gets to the room hes standing in. As hes walking down this hallway, he hears a sudden crash outside. He walks over to a window, looks down onto the street, sees that a car accident has occurred at the intersection of seventh and east street. All of a sudden as he looks down at the back of the scene, he feels a tap on his shoulder. He turns around and theres no one there. What he happens to do is in the course of turning around, he happened to look up. And when he looked up he saw an envelope sticking out from the ceiling. There is a latter on the third floor, an old latter, he brings it up and crawls down, bringing the envelope, addressed to any a man named edward shaw. As it turns out edward shaw was the landlord of the building. He then notices that there is a whole just above his head, just large enough that a man could sneak through. He does something i would never do, he puts his hand into the hole. laughs routes around, feels a piece of metal. He pulls the piece of metal out and finds this sign missing Soldiers Office, third story, room nine, miss clara barton. Lucky for us, richard is a civil war buff. And at the time, clara barton was in the news a bit. Around that time they had just rededicated a monument to her at the Antietam National battlefield. She was in the news. So, richard is like making these connections and thinking there has to be some connection with her and this space and he looks across the attic space with his flashlight. He crawls up into the hole. He sees thousands of artifacts. Thousands. Upon further investigation he finds that most of the artifacts belong to that civil war era landlord, edward shaw. A lot of his clothing, his paperwork. He was a clerk at the Patent Office as well you read we know that a lot of things were his because he wrote his name on it. Including a pair of long underwear. He wrote his nickname into the waistband. But there were signs of barton, including some of her paperwork from the missing Soldiers Office, including one of the missing soldiers roles. What we believe happened is that barton, when she left in 1868, she left some things behind and shaw, kind of a 19thcentury quarter, he was keeping all of his stuff. He kept some of hers and kishi ever came back for it. And so these artifacts are left behind. Richard is excited. He wants to tell people about this and ultimately he goes to his bosses at the gsa. He is going to say you know, this is what i found. They are interested in the find, but ultimately, there is a lot of money going on here. The sale of this structure at a key location at seventh and ee is going to be worth millions of dollars. So ultimately, initially, the procedure to prepare the building for sale goes on. What ends up happening is richard gets really invested in this and he starts reaching out to historians, reaching out to people at the National Parks service, national archives. He hits paydirt with the National Parks service. A historian named gary scott. Together they look at the artifacts and the peace the story back together. They tell the story of clara barton in the civil war when she lived in this building and this is where she started the missing Soldiers Office. This is where shes going to help find 22,000 missing soldiers. A compelling story. And ultimately that story is going to break out in a 1997. Published in the washington post, featured on cnn, the building will ultimately be preserved and saved from being sold and ultimately torn down. And that leads to ultimately a museum being formed. It takes more than almost 20 years. But the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum Opened in 2015, the summer of 2015. You can see they took off the ugly facade, brought the Building Back to its 19thcentury appearance. The museum has operated out of the storefront down here, its where the Visitor Center is located. The museum is a p are on the third floor. This was bartons room, right up here, is where she lived when she was in the missing Soldiers Office during the civil war and immediately after the conflict. The museum now has a unique partnership between three entities. So, the building is actually owned by a private developer in washington. They own essentially does block here, as well as condos that were built on the site. You can see it in this image. The condos were right up. Because she lived on the block, they called them the Clara Bartons apartments. The building is actually owned by a private developer. The General Services administration actually has a privatization easement on the first and third floors bases. So we can operate a museum. My organization, the National Museum of civil war medicine has an agreement to operate the museum on site. So, when you come to visit the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office museum, you will be working with and seeing, working with the National Museum of civil war medicine personnel and volunteers and you will see the exhibits designed by us as well. So, this partnership has ensured that this space gets saved and ultimately that the story gets told. In this space, in this boarding house, this is where clara barton makes a huge transition from a schoolteacher and Government Employee to a humanitarian. To a person who will save countless lives during the civil war and then start an organization afterwards that will save the lives of millions, helping millions across the world, not only here in the United States. That transition takes place in those boarding house rooms on the third floor. You can walk in the footsteps of barton, go up the same staircase she went up when she was going there to look in to live and to search for missing soldiers after the war. You can see the space where she becomes americas most famous humanitarian. That work goes on today. We will tell you a story are any of you familiar with the restaurant had leo, in washington, d. C. The top is restaurant across the street operated by a celebrity chef, hosea andres. He is started and Organization Called world central kitchen, which goes around the world and helps to feed people in the aftermath of disasters. All across the world, even in the United States. He recently won an award from the James Beard Foundation as the humanitarian of the year. In his speech, he cited clara barton. He cited that his restaurant was across the street from where she lived during the civil war. Her legacy still touches us all today. It is still helping millions of people across the world and still inspiring others to action. Thank you all for the opportunity today. I hope that you will come and visit us in washington. applause fascinating stuff, i love it. Any questions if you would, come down to the microphone. If you are not able to come down to the microphone, maybe i can bring it to you for the questions. Ok . Does anybody want to step up . No . No questions today. You sure . I have got a question. Jake, what happened to those 60,000 letters . Were they discovered . So, the 60,000 letters, most of them did not survive. There are some that she ultimately keeps for her own records in order to she wants to later write a book, she doesnt but many other people use the papers she collected to write books about her. Ultimately the letters that survived wound up at the library of congress. Is a sizable clara barton collection there thats all accessible online, which is fantastic, you can go and search through the letters, the ones that survived. The majority of them, we dont know what happened to them. Of the 22,000 missing soldiers, one of the most frequently asked questions at the museum is how many of them were alive . Were any of them alive . Did some of them disappear and not till their families what happened to them . We know of one soldier who was found alive. His name was joseph hitchens, from new york. We know that he existed, we know he was alive because he wrote a letter to barton saying how dare you publish my name in the newspaper. How dare you. She actually writes back to him a very snarky letter. Its wonderfully snarky. And she says no, how dare you not tell your family for two years that you were alive . How dare you . And by the way, your mom passed away while you were gone. You should write home to your sister. We never hear of hitchens after that. We dont know whether he got back in touch with his family. We dont know much else of his story, but there were two and letters, one that hitchens wrote to barton and one that artan wrote back to hitchens that survive. There are a few exchanges like that that do exist. Yeah, if you could come down here to the mic just so everybody can hear you . Thank you. In the meantime, as the gentleman comes down, my next question, and i posed this last night, i always loved visiting places ive never been to, and ive never been to the visit missing Soldiers Office, what days of the week are you open . Thursdays through saturday 11 00 to 5 00, but we are open by appointment so if you cannot make it on those days, you can go to our website and we have a form you can fill out or you can give us a call. You can book an appointment. We ask a week in advance. Yes, sir . The question i have, someone my family has ties to, florence atwater. Serving through gettysburg and then captured and sent down to a prison down in georgia. I guess the question is you didnt bring it up here in this speech, but how does that intertwine with your knowledge of atwater, the one who recorded all the lists for the confederates and took that list, thought he was getting smart when it belonged to him and he winds up in prison in new york state, dishonorable discharge. For a good part of her life she had to restore his credibility, and she did it successfully. I think of said enough, but i just want to no, thank you, thank you, and its a great point, but for the nature of time here in getting the full scope of her life and the missing Soldiers Office, there are fascinating figures that come into and out of her life in dorans atwater is probably one of the most interesting. Captured shortly after gettysburg, ends up in the andersonville prison, tasked by the confederate overseers of the camp with taking a register of all the deaths that take place at the camp. Ultimately he is going to be keeping this list for the confederates and he is told by them, by these overseers at the camp that that list ultimately, at the end of the conflict would be turned over to union authorities. He didnt trust them. And so he keeps another list that he will ultimately take with him when he leaves andersonville. He ends up in annapolis, maryland. He gets connected with barton. In fact, that list is going to really be the inspiration for why she goes to andersonville in august of 1865. Thats how they get connected. How barton gets connected with the andersonville story and ultimately that list will provide us with almost 13,000 names that she will be about to inform the families about. Just point on that, when i said she went out on a lecture tour, dorans atwater came with her. He was her opening act. He talked about the experience at the andersonville prison, what it was like, the conditions there, and ultimately was looking to help tell the story of all those prisoners that were in that camp. And then barton would come up and talk about her role during the war, how she got tied to andersonville and ultimately the missing Soldiers Office. Yes, atwater winds up getting into a huge spat with the War Department because he wanted to give the list to barton and the War Department said that the list was theirs. He ends up in jail. It all ends well, though. He does end up marrying a tahitian princess and becomes the diplomatic liaison. He became part of the official u. S. Mission in tahiti after the war. He ends up in paradise. Atwater is tremendously important to the story. We have more information about him, his connection, website as well. Lots of resources there. On our website as well. Lots of resources there. We do have an online database of all the soldiers who ended up on bartons list. The number stretches in excess of 6000 names in excess of 6000 names that were published on the missing soldiers role. So thank you, that was a great question. Thank you also much. applause mr. Bearss certainly does not need an introduction, but i will give a brief one. He is a legend in civil war historiography, battle preservation. After high school, he joined the marines, served in world war ii and was seriously injured. After the war, he received a bs from georgetown, an ma