Ten Georgetown University students are researching the life of American Red Cross founder Clara Barton in collaboration with a National Park Service site to bolster the content of the site’s exhibits and website content.

Chandra Manning — a Georgetown history professor teaching a research seminar about Barton — coordinated the research with the Clara Barton National Historic Site, which memorializes the Maryland house where Barton lived and ran the Red Cross for 15 years, to be presented at a Dec. 6 panel. Students’ research focused on many aspects of Barton’s life, including early Red Cross disaster response, her leadership and her struggles with mental health. 

Manning said she decided to focus her class on Barton following concerns about the proposed renovations to the historic site. 

“The initial proposed plan would have dramatically altered the site and would have reduced the amount of the site that was dedicated to the site’s purpose, which is telling the story of Clara Barton and the American Red Cross,” Manning told The Hoya.

Manning said she thought Georgetown students would be excited to conduct impactful research.

“I just know from past experience that Georgetown students are really pretty enthusiastic about doing work that makes some kind of impact beyond the confines of a single class,” Manning said.

Students’ findings will be featured on the National Park Service’s webpage for the Clara Barton National Historic Site and in exhibits at the site.

Manning’s seminar uses primary sources, including Barton’s diary, and independent research to encourage students to think about Barton’s life. Barton’s work as a Civil War nurse and later humanitarian missions contributed to the creation of the emergency medicine field.

Emma Vonder Haar (CAS ’26), an American studies and government major in Manning’s class, researched Barton’s legacy in pop culture and uncovered references to her in unexpected places. 

“The WooSox, which are a baseball affiliate of the Red Sox, have a mascot called Clara the Heart of the Commonwealth, and it’s based on Clara Barton,” Vonder Haar told The Hoya. “There’s several schools named after her and roads named after her, and there’s a stamp in Armenia dedicated to her for her work there during the genocide.”

Fallon Wolfley (CAS ’26), who is developing a documentary comparing Barton’s poetry to traditional war poetry, said her research allowed her to explore the Library of Congress’s digitized archives of Barton’s writings and personal correspondences.

Full disclosure: Fallon Wolfley currently serves as the Senior Blog Editor for The Hoya.

“I think it’s humanizing, and it allows you to connect with the historical figure on a level that’s not just some aggrandized version, but as a real person who did amazing things,” Wolfley told The Hoya. “I think oftentimes in history we boil people down to either good or bad things. But I think that it’s nice to talk about the more human parts of a very important figure.”

Throughout the fall semester, the class visited multiple sites connected to Barton’s life and legacy, including the Clara Barton National Historic Site, the National Museum of Civil War Medicine and the Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office Museum.

Manning said it was rewarding to see her students engaging eagerly with history on the field trips.

“It was a genuine highlight of the semester for me to share that experience with the students,” Manning said. “Their sense of appreciation for what they were witnessing was truly moving.” 

Vonder Haar said finding contemporary evidence of Barton’s life was challenging because of the limited time she had to conduct research.

“As Professor Manning tells us, nothing tells us everything, but everything tells us something,” Vonder Haar said. “I have kind of resigned that I’m not going to find every single representation of Clara Barton in pop culture after her death.”

Wolfley said she appreciated the opportunity to conduct original research through Manning’s seminar.

“It’s fun contributing to the field of history in a way that nobody else has,” Wolfley said. “Even if it’s not the most consequential, it’s nice to create something for public history.”