Clara Barton’s Missing Soldiers Office

After working on battlefields and in hospitals of the Civil War, Clara Barton found a new calling in the early months of 1865. As the conflict drew to a close, the 44-year-old war relief worker arrived in Annapolis, Maryland where transports of sickly Union prisoners arrived from prison camps across the South.

Working with the survivors, Barton became keenly aware of the need to provide information to the families of missing Union soldiers. In response, she endeavored to open a Missing Soldiers Office to offer this invaluable service to grieving families.

After receiving approval from President Abraham Lincoln in March 1865, Barton began the immense task of tracking down those who disappeared during the conflict. Without government-issued identification, fallen soldiers went missing at an alarming rateduring the Civil War.

After opening an office on the third floor of her boardinghouse on 7th Street in Washington, Barton received thousands of letters from relatives looking for lost loved ones. Over three years, the office received more than 60,000 inquiries for information about missing soldiers, sometimes more than 150 letters in a single day.

She and a team of clerks compiled lists of names to publish five separate “Rolls of Missing Men” in newspapers across the country.

To financially support her work in the Missing Soldiers Office, Barton delivered lectures across the North, telling her story and the stories of those incarcerated at Andersonville during the war. She also sought $15,000 from Congress to offset significant operational costs. Her request was finally approved in 1866.

When Barton closed the Missing