Clara Barton, later known as the Angel of the Battlefield, kept a room in Washington as a shelter to which she could return when her strength failed under exposure and labor in the field. From her Seventh Street home, she began her Civil War battlefield work in 1862, leaving for the front lines at Antietam atop a supply wagon loaded with donated food and medical supplies. She worked as a copyist in the Patent Office at Ninth and F Streets from 1861 to 1865. Because she could not serve in the Union Army as a woman, she devoted herself to feeding, nursing, and comforting thousands of Union wounded during the nation’s most costly war, which took more than 600,000 American lives. After the war, at her own initiative and expense, she made her Seventh Street home the headquarters for the search for missing soldiers, later receiving a flat fee of $15,000 from the government for this work and becoming the first woman to run a federal office. She received more than 63,000 letters of inquiry and wrote 41,855 replies, ultimately identifying about 22,000 of 62,000 missing soldiers. In November 1997, Richard Lyons, inspecting 437 Seventh Street before its planned demolition, discovered and saved Barton’s home and office, including the Missing Soldiers Office in Room 9, preserving a time capsule of the Civil War nurse and Red Cross founder’s work.
