Clara Barton was, almost certainly, that person. Born in rural Massachusetts in 1821, she was the daughter of a Revolutionary War officer, and, like so many of her generation, she treasured the connection to 1776. Clara Barton was certainly eligible and attractive, and why she remained unmarried at the age of forty is somewhat mysterious: perhaps she never could find a man to equal her idealized image of her father. But in any event, in the first and second years of the war, Clara Barton transformed herself into a deliverer of medical supplies and a nurse’s assistant.