to search her soul and give more attention to religious beliefs, Barton remained aloof from the doctrines of the church. She had trouble meshing the Universalist notion of ultimate joy with the poverty and unhappiness she saw around her, and if anything she became increasingly pessimistic during this period. After confiding to a friend about this trend in her personal feelings in 1843, he replied with a note of sadness: “You announce to me a change in your religious view from a hope in the final infinite happiness of all mankind you have become a believer in the endless misery of a part, that is truly a change.”47 Barton never completely relinquished her faith but remained, as she pronounced it, a “well-disposed pagan.”48 Still she enjoyed the tie to the church's organization, which provided a welcome outlet for her enormous energy and capability.
Barton's most ambitious project during the 1840s, however, was worked in tandem with her brother Stephen. For several years Clara had been aware of the need to redistrict the schools in the town of Oxford. Owing to the success of the various mills, the town had grown rapidly, and the centers of population had shifted so that the locations of the old schools were no longer suitable. Oxford had no large central schools. Instead it relied on several small, dilapidated buildings that were empty half of the year and served only a few pupils. Clara had seen similar problems in other areas. In the early 1840s, during the time she had taught in Millbury, she had persuaded the local school board to endorse a report that deplored the poor attendance, lack of uniform textbooks, inadequate facilities, and superficial community attention to school problems.49 In 1844 she began in earnest to try to remedy similar problems in Oxford, and she found in Stephen, who was then a member of the town school board, a willing and able compatriot.
After several sessions, during which they consumed “more or less midnight oil,” Clara and Stephen set out to convince the town of the need for a new system of school organization. They met with strong opposition. Many Oxford citizens believed that such an effort would cost the town dearly and that sufficient funds were already spent on education. Others saw a problem in requiring their children to walk across town to school; they liked the system of neighborhood schools, which kept the boys and girls close to home where they could be called quickly if they were needed to help with farm or shop. Moreover, the Barton's’ original plan had grown to encompass a scheme for educating the millworkers and their children. As a mill owner, Stephen was well aware that low wages and long hours conspired to keep these people from obtaining an education, and that, furthermore, no district school existed in the area in which the millworkers lived. Although this situation outraged Clara, few of the citizens of Oxford were convinced that the town was obligated to educate those from the lower social ranks. Their objections were reinforced by similar opposition from two of the town's most powerful men, Deacon Peter Butler and Clara's own father, Captain Stephen Barton. So influential were they that it took Clara and Stephen junior over a year even to bring the matter before a town meeting.50
In the spring of 1845 the issue was finally presented to the town. Clara had labored arduously over the major speech in favor of redistricting. The argument was read by a popular mill owner, “of course as his own,” for as a woman she had no voice in the meeting. Despite her long and respected years of teaching, in matters such as these she sadly recognized that “I was nobody.” The scene was tense as speakers from each side aired their views and emotions rose. Those in favor of redistricting watched anxiously to see if the moderator—Captain Barton—would show any favoritism. But Clara and her brother had canvassed well, and just as the vote was to be taken, eighty-two workers from the local factories marched in and packed the ballot box with a solid block of votes in favor of redistricting.51
That night Clara celebrated at a special dinner cooked by her mother. The whole family assembled to share their triumph and to reconcile the split family views. Captain Barton showed no animosity over defeat at the hands of his children. Wrote Clara, “my father's first hearty toast was to the ‘new fangled folly.’”52
It had been a rewarding effort, the first of many crusades Clara was to fight for the distressed or underprivileged, and she found the habit of altruism addictive. Thus she continued the good work by advising and aiding the redistricting board and undertaking the design of one of the new enlarged district schools. “I had ample opportunity for original design for I had never seen a schoolhouse that in its construction was not nearly as well-adapted to any other ordinary use than a school,” she dryly noted. (Her design called for maps, blackboards, and a clock for teaching purposes, as well as a sloping center aisle to compensate for the uniformly sized desks, which overwhelmed six-year-olds and cramped the older pupils. A few years later Clara proudly described the classroom to a former student as “chang’d indeed…within, without and around.”) This project completed, she embraced yet another social cause—the still-controversial establishment and teaching of the mill school.53
The school was established initially in one of the largest local mills. It was a small, dark pocket whose only light came from a large doorway facing a public street. To provide enough light for reading, the door had to be kept open, and the noise from the road was as constant distraction. Every passing dog and cat skipped in, as well as “goats that searched the neighborhood for dainties.” In addition, there was the problem of the diversity in age and nationality of the students. Clara taught a total of seventy pupils, who ranged from four to twentyfour years of age. There were American-born scholars in the school, but also English, Irish, and French, which resulted in conflicts of language and culture. To keep order under such circumstances, Clara appointed monitors—to be one was deemed a high honor among the students—and arranged classes with an eye to preserving each pupil's self-esteem. By using a combination of “gentle restraint, calm reasoning, confidence and encouragement,” she guided her school to success.54
Those who had doubted the effectiveness of such a school were surprised to find the makeshift classroom abuzz with productive activity. “There was not a minute of the day for me to lose,” Barton acknowledged, noting that her classes studied not only “the 3 R's,” but algebra, bookkeeping, philosophy, chemistry, and ancient and natural history. In one area the school so excelled that it gained a regional reputation. Convinced that reading aloud would improve the language skills of her foreign pupils, Barton encouraged recreational reading and rewarded those who skillfully dramatized their favorite pieces. To her surprise crowds began to gather outside the open doorway on the days when the readings took place. What had originated as a spontaneous and pragmatic exercise charmed the public into recognizing the school's potential, and the mill school became widely known for its distinguished “concert readings.”55
Once she had met the challenge of the mill school successfully, however, Barton became increasingly dissatisfied with the cycle of teaching, which left her with sporadic months of aimless leisure. She was now in her late twenties and had mastered every situation that had been presented to her. She had tamed the unruly boys in countless towns and country schools, fostered the hopes of the area's illiterate mill hands, and helped to bring about educational reforms, which had seemed to her such obvious necessities. In her mind the years of dull routine stretched endlessly before her. With no jobs open to women save teaching or factory work, she could not imagine from what direction she would find new and stimulating work. Instead Barton began to think seriously of leaving the teacher's podium for a pupil's desk, to find, in her words, “a school, the object of which was to teach me something.”56
It was not the first time Clara had considered advanced schooling. She was, however, uncertain about the possibilities open to women and the methods of gaining admission to the few institutions that had opened their doors to gifted females. As early as 1838 she had asked Lucien Burleigh for advice on the subject, questioning him also about her potential for earning money while a student. Burleigh recommended a school in Uxbridge, Hubbell s, and one nearby in Charlestown, “where young ladies have an opportunity of paying their board by their labor.”57 Money problems and indecision stalled her, and nothing came of the idea at this time. Ten years later, with her capital enlarged by scrupulous savings, Barton again began to actively look at colleges and academies. Only two colleges accepted women at this
