Dates of Importance
1821 Clara Barton born December 25, North Oxford, Massachusetts. Died April 12, 1912, Glen Echo, Maryland.
1828 Henry Dunant born May 8. World Red Cross Day celebrated annually on his birthday. Dunant died October 30, 1910.
1863 Red Cross founded at Geneva, Switzerland, following publication of Henry Dunant's book, A Meynory of Soo'etino.
1864 The first Geneva Convention was adopted to protect sick and wounded on battlefields.
1881 Clara Barton founded American Association of the Red Cross May 21 in Washington, D.C. First chapter established at DansviUe, New York, August 22.
Michigan forest fires mark organization's first disaster relief effort.
1898 American Red Cross provided service for military forces for first time as Spanish-American War began.
1901 First Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Henry Dunant.
1905 Original 1900 congressional charter of American Red Cross revised, giving the organization the foundation upon which it provides disaster relief and assistance to the military today.
1909 Jane Delano founded American Red Cross Nursing Corps.
1910 American Red Cross first aid program began.
1914 American Red Cross water safety program established.
1917 Junior Red Cross began.
1919 League of Red Cross Societies established in Geneva through efforts of American volunteer Henry P Davison.
1941 National Blood Donor Service established. First center opened in February in New York City, under supervision of Charles Drew, M.D.
1943 President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed March as Red Cross Month, making it an annual event.
1948 American Red Cross established first nationwide civilian blood program.
1949 Civilians received protection under Geneva Conventions. Three earlier conventions protected wounded and sick members of the armed forces and prisoners of war.

 


Clara Barton, full name Clarissa Harlowe Barton (1821-1912), American humanitarian and founder of the American Red Cross (see Red Cross).
Barton was born in Oxford, Massachusetts, in 1821, and educated at home, chiefly by her two brothers and two sisters. She was a teacher at first and the founder of various free schools in New Jersey. In 1854 she became a clerk in the Patent Office, Washington, D.C., but resigned at the start of the American Civil War (1861-1865) to work as a volunteer, distributing supplies to wounded soldiers. After the war she supervised a systematic search for missing soldiers. Barton eventually received a Congressional appropriation to run what was known as the Missing Soldiers Office and became the first woman to head a government bureau. Barton tracked down information on nearly 22,000 soldiers before the office was closed in 1868.
Between 1869 and 1873 Barton lived in Europe, where she helped establish hospitals during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) and was honored with Germany's Iron Cross for outstanding military service. Through Barton's efforts the American Red Cross Society was formed in 1881; she served as the first president of the organization until 1904. In 1884 she represented the United States at the Red Cross Conference and at the International Peace Convention in Geneva. She was responsible for the introduction at this convention of the "American amendment," which established that the Red Cross was to serve victims of peacetime disasters as well as victims of war.
She superintended relief work in the yellow-fever pestilence in Florida (1887); in the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, flood (1889); in the Russian famine (1891); among the Armenians (1896); in the Spanish-American War (1898); and in the South African War (1899-1902). The last work that she personally directed was the relief of victims of the flood at Galveston, Texas, in 1900. She died in Glen Echo, Maryland, on April 12, 1912. She wrote several books on the Red Cross and Story of My Childhood (1907).


Jean Henri Dunant,(1828-1910), Swiss philanthropist and founder of the Red Cross, born in Geneva. Dunant was appalled by the condition of the wounded he saw near the battlefield of Solferino, Italy, in 1859, during the Franco-Austrian War. As a result he wrote the book A Memory of Solferino (1862; trans. 1911), suggesting that neutral organizations be established to aid wounded soldiers in time of war. In 1863 an international conference was held in Geneva, and the Geneva Convention of 1864 established the permanent International Red Cross. In 1901 Dunant shared the first Nobel Peace Prize with the French statesman Frédéric Passy. Among Dunant's writings are Fraternité et charité internationales en temps de guerre (International Brotherhood and Charity in Time of War, 1864)