(Peterboro, NY – Sept. 215) Clara Barton will be featured at the annual In the Kitchen Bloomer Tea in Peterboro on Sunday Sept. 20 at 12:30 p.m. From the first month of the Civil War in April 1861 to its final month in April 1865, Clara Barton tended to wounded soldiers and distributed supplies to the troops, earning her the respected endearing name of “The Angel of the Battlefield.”
In this year 2015 of observance of the Sesquicentennial of the end of the Civil War, Clara Barton is an example of a dedicated person who continued the work to be done for the future. In March, the month before the President died, Lincoln approved of Barton’s plan to establish the Office of Correspondence with Friends of the Missing Men of the United States Army. During the four years of directing the office, Barton received and answered 63,182 letters addressing missing soldiers. In the summer of 1865 Barton assisted in locating and marking nearly 13,000 Union graves in Andersonville, Ga. and raised the flag at the dedication of Andersonville National Cemetery on Aug. 17, 1865.
In 1863 Barton worked with Frances D. Gage to educate former slaves, growing her interest in equal rights for women and African-Americans. Her meeting with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in 1867 aligned her with the suffrage movement.
In 1876, due to failing health, Clara Barton moved again to New York to the Dansville Sanitarium for her health (Barton had previously lived in New York for her teacher training at the Clinton Liberal Institute). She moved to her own Dansville home when she regained her health, and continued working to organize the American Society of the Red Cross. Barton served as the first president of the American Red Cross from 1882-1904.The first local chapter was organized in Dansville in 1881.
Rosie Taravella, the Regional CEO for the American Red Cross of the Central New York Region will speak at the tea. Taravella became the Regional Chief Executive Officer of the American Red Cross of Central New York in early 2012, overseeing the organization’s service delivery, fundraising efforts, and brand visibility throughout 16 Central New York counties. She now provides oversight for 26 counties.
Originally from Central New York, Rosie spent several years in Los Angeles as a writer and an actor, appearing in such television productions as Who’s the Boss, Married With Children, Full House, and others. Her play, The Wives, was produced in Hollywood in 1994 and directed by Charles Nelson Reilly. In 1999, she co-wrote and starred in Carlo’s Wake, a comedy film based on her play Pa’s Funeral, which also starred Oscar winners Martin Landau and Rita Moreno.
Following her entertainment career, Taravella began raising funds and administering arts and educational institutions, including Los Angeles Opera, where she earned the company’s first NEA grant for its main stage productions. At Mount St. Mary’s College, she co-managed a capital campaign that raised $40 million in two years for facilities improvements and scholarships.
Returning to New York State in 2007, Taravella served as the Executive Director of the High Falls Film Festival before arriving in Syracuse in 2009 to serve as Vice President of Corporate Advancement at WCNY Public Broadcasting. She is responsible for bringing Lily Tomlin and Sesame Street’s “Gordon” (Roscoe Ormann) to Central New York in 2010.
In 2011, she kicked off the public phase of “The Campaign for WCNY,” a capital fundraising effort for the renovation and construction of WCNY’s new headquarters, located in the Near Westside of downtown Syracuse.
Taravella is a 2015 graduate of the Health Leadership Fellows Program, sponsored by the Health Foundation of Western and Central New York. She serves on the Grants Committee of the Women’s Fund of Central New York, and on the board of F.O.C.U.S. Greater Syracuse. She lives in Skaneateles with her husband and stepdaughter.
Melanie Martin, a Civil War reenactor will portray Clara Barton. Martin often portrays Pvt. Lyons Wakeman, a woman who disguised herself as an older man in order to serve in the Civil War.
The annual tea is catered by The Copper Turret in Morrisville and hosted by Stewards of the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark who will be dressed in 1851 bloomer costumes as they serve tea. This volunteer committee turns the assembly room in the Smithfield Community Center into a tea parlor to celebrate Miller’s Sept. 20, 1822 birth date. Daughter of Ann and Gerrit Smith, Miller is credited with designing the trouser costume that Amelia Bloomer popularized for women’s health in her newspaper The Lily. Miller’s 500 page cookbook was named In the Kitchen by her cousin Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
Reservations are required: $35 by Sept. 11.
A Children’s Bloomer Tea will be held at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 19 with Victorian take-home crafts, activities, history quizzes, tea, fashion displays and goodies for all. Adults must accompany children at all times. All ages are welcomed with crafts best suited for ages 5 to 14. Reservations required by Sept. 11: $25 per adult/child ticket, with $10 for additional guests.
The teas benefit the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark and are held at the Smithfield Community Center, 5255 Pleasant Valley Road in Peterboro.
The National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum will also be open at the site.
For more information, call 315-546-5583 or email inthekitchentea@gmail.com.
New York State sign dedicated to Elizabeth Smith Miller in 1998 honoring Miller as Madison County’s representation for Governor’s Commission for Women of Achievement. The Stewards for the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark in Peterboro hold a tea annually to celebrate Miller’s birth date.
New York State sign dedicated to Elizabeth Smith Miller in 1998 honoring Miller as Madison County’s representation for Governor’s Commission for Women of Achievement. The Stewards for the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark in Peterboro hold a tea annually to celebrate Miller’s birth date.
Miss Clara Barton sworn and examined.
By Mr. Howard:
Question. Of what State are you a native?
Answer. I am a native of Massachusetts.
Question. Were you raised and educated there?
Answer. I was ; in Worcester county, Massachusetts.
Question. What has been your employment during the last year?
Answer. I have been searching for the missing men of the Union army.
Question. Where have you been engaged in that business?
Answer. I have been engaged in it here in Washington.
Question. Where else?
Answer. Nowhere else in that business. That business has led to other matters, which have called me away.
Question. State where else you have been, and in what you have been engaged.
Answer. I commenced to search in the spring of 1865. In the latter part of June, 1865, I formed the acquaintance of a young man who had been a prisoner at Andersonville, and who had brought away the death record of that prison. He requested an interview, and, on giving it, I learned from him how the dead were buried in Andersonville, and I became satisfied that it was possible to identify them. I carried the question before General Hoffman, who, with the assistance, I think, of the Assistant Secretary of War, laid before the Secretary, Mr. Stanton, who sent for me to come to him the next day. I did so, and stated to him my impressions, requesting that parties be sent out to identify the graves at Andersonville, and mark to them. He declared his gratitude even at the suggestion, all having thought it impossible; stated that an expedition should be started immediately, and that he would select some officer for the purpose, and he invited me to accompany it. We were ready in a week, and on the 8th of July we left Washington. I requested that the young man should also go with the party to identify the graves. We reached Andersonville, Georgia, on the 25th of July, and very soon the colored people there commenced to gather around me.
Question. What did you discover in relation to the colored people?
Answer. I discovered that they were in a state of ignorance, generally, at that time of their own condition as freedmen. Some of them knew it. They all, of course, mistrusted it. They had all heard it from one another. A few knew it from their masters, and only a few ; and what they did hear they had very little confidence to believe. Hearing that a party of Yankees, and especially a Yankee lady, was there, and they commenced to gather around me for the facts, asking me their little questions in their own way, which was to the effect, if they were free, and if Abraham Lincoln was really dead. They had been told that he was dead ; that he had been killed ; but at the same time they had been informed that, now that he was dead, they were no longer free, but would be all slaves again ; and with that had come the suspicion, on their part, that he was not dead, but that it was a hoax to hold them in slavery. They would travel twenty miles in the night, after their day’s work was done, and I would find them standing in front of my tent in the morning to hear me say whether it was true that Abraham Lincoln was dead, and that they were free. I told them Abraham Lincoln was dead ; that I saw him dead ; that I was near him when he died ; and that they were free as I was. The next question was, what they should do. There were questions between the negro and his master in regard to labor and in regard to pay. I saw or discovered that the masters were inclined to get their labor without pay. Of course I had no way of proving that, but I inferred it. They were at work. Most of them offered to work until Christmas time, and to take a part of the profits. General Saxton, I should think, made some regulation specifying just what portion of each crop the negroes should have. They were all very anxious to hear the rules read. The commandant of each post had issued certain rules and regulations. These they had never heard read, and they came to me to know what the paper said. The rules were published daily in the Macon papers. They said they had been told that General Wilson’s orders said that they should work six days in the week hard, and half a day on Sunday. They wanted to know if it was so. My course with them was to read General Wilson’s paper, as they called it. I have read it through sometimes forty times a day. They stood around my tent in great numbers on a Sunday ; more than a hundred, men, women, and children, and every day more or less. Perhaps there were very few hours that I was not engaged in advising them, and attempting to decide some causes for them