For some upcoming projects for the Public History podcast, I’ve been reflecting back on YouTube content I helped produce during my time at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine and Clara Barton Missing Soldiers Office.

In March 2021, I was stationed at the Missing Soldiers Office in Downtown Washington, DC and working as the Director of Interpretation at that site and the Civil War medical museum in Frederick, MD. As part of a YouTube series we were working on at the time, I hosted a virtual tour of the Missing Soldiers Office.

This is the location where Clara Barton lived and worked during the Civil War-era. From a humble boardinghouse room, the middle-aged government clerk and daughter of Massachusetts established a small war-time relief effort that grew into a full-fledged career as a humanitarian. She served as a nurse on battlefields from Antietam and Fredericksburg to the islands of South Carolina, gaining a reputation as “The Angel of the Battlefield.”

After the Civil War, Barton launched the Missing Soldiers Office to search for tens of thousands of missing United States military personnel who disappeared during the conflict. From 1865 to 1868, Barton and her small team notified more than 22,000 families of the fate of their missing loved ones. It was an unprecedented effort that set the stage for graves registration and POW/MIA advocacy in the 20th and 21st centuries.

I loved my time working at the Missing Soldiers Office, roughly 2018 to 2021, and you should absolutely make your way to this lovely small museum on your next visit to the nation’s capital. It’s only a few blocks from Ford’s Theatre, the Smithsonian American Art Museum/Portrait Gallery, the National Archives and the National Mall, so it fits into any visit to larger DC sites.

Here’s my tour from 2021 (when I had a lot more hair).

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Read more about Clara Barton and the Missing Soldiers Office

Coal Region mother sought help from Clara Barton after the Civil War

American History TV | My 2019 presentation about the Missing Soldiers Office

“Please Examine this Roll” – Clara Barton’s Search for the Missing

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