CLARA BARTON. Autograph Manuscript Signed, Dansville, NY, 6 September 1880. 1 page, in a small leather-bound autograph album that is 3" high by 5" wide.

A charming verse written by Clara Barton in the autograph album of a good friend during the years when she was working to establish the American Red Cross.

Barton first achieved fame as a nurse during the Civil War, and she then headed the government’s Missing Soldiers Office from 1865 to 1868. Suffering from exhaustion, she traveled to Europe in 1869 where she learned of the Red Cross and joined in its work during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. On her return to the United States in 1873, suffering again from ill health, Barton went to Dansville, New York, to visit Our Home on the Hillside, a sanatarium that offered a water cure and health institute. She soon settled in Dansville in a house of her own, and lived there during the years when she was campaigning to establish the American Red Cross, an effort that succeeded in 1882 when the U.S. ratified the Geneva Convention and joined the International Red Cross.

This autograph album opens with information identifying its owner as S. Louise Phelps of East Orange, NJ, and noting that it was begun at Our Home on the Hillside in August 1880. Phelps and Barton met each other in Dansville, and the two became close friends, with Phelps supporting Barton’s Red Cross work over the years. The album contains over ninety signatures, many with inscriptions, from various individuals who came to Dansville from many different locations in the years from 1880 to 1882.

On one leaf is an eight-line verse written and signed by Clara Barton, dated Dansville, 6 September 1880:

Twas in the years long past and gone / when shadows lighter fell,
You met me for a moment, and I know/ you loved me well;
And through the space you’ve held me / close clasped in memorie’s spell,
And for this I’ll hold you through the rest / and I will love you well.
Clara Barton

I have identified only one other well-known individual to sign the album: A. BRONSON ALCOTT, the American Transcendentalist and reformer who was the father of author Louisa May Alcott. He has signed on a leaf, “A. Bronson Alcott / Concord, Mass.” Closer research might uncover some names in the album that have an association with Barton and the Red Cross.

The album’s gilt-stamped leather binding is worn and breaking along the spine, but still largely intact. Internally, there is some staining to a few pages, but the album is in good condition overall and the page with Barton’s verse is in very good condition.

A most unusual and fine item. $850.00

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