Clarissa Harlowe Barton was born on December 25, 1821, in Oxford, Massachusetts. Her father’s name was Stephen Barton and her mother’s name was Sarah Barton. Growing up, Clara had four older siblings which included the following: Dorothea Barton, Stephen Barton, David Barton, and Sarah Barton Vassall. Clara was tutored by her older siblings for most of her life and by the age of eight she had started going to boarding school. Clara didn’t always have the best childhood. She had a lot of family tragedies that left her devastated and heartbroken. Dorothea, her sister to whom she was particularly close to, had a mental breakdown sometime in the 1820s and the cause of her condition was unknown. Some of her symptoms included frequent, emotional outbursts and violent episodes. In one of her incidents, Dorothea attacked her sister-in-law with an axe. Unfortunately, mental illness was poorly understood in her time and there was no medical treatment that the doctors could provide for her. The best they could do was to lock her in her bedroom, until in 1846 when she had passed away at the age of forty-two.…show more content… David, her older brother, was working with some local men on a barn, when the wooden plank that he was standing on suddenly gave way and caused him to lose his balance and fall. Even though no injury occurred, he soon developed a fever, severe headaches, and other debilitating symptoms. The doctors were at a loss to identify what was wrong with him and he soon became bedridden. The doctors made a decision to go back to a common medical treatment in which they called “bleeding.” It consisted of placing leeches all over his skin to draw out the blood they thought was bad, hoping that his body could make new and pure blood. Clara volunteered, on a regular basis every day, to draw his
