Position at Antietam
Civilian (Age 38 at the battle)
Personal
1824 -1864 New Jersey
Born February 29, 1824, in Somerset County, New Jersey. Raised by an elderly relative after her family was split apart by divorce.
Nickname: Her husband called her “Belle.” Earned the nickname “The Raider” for her success in scouring the Virginia countryside for useful materials.
Education
Educated at St. Mary’s Hall in Burlington, N.J., an Episcopal boarding school for girls known today as Doane Academy.
Civilian career highlights
Moved to New York City by 1846 and became a governess. Occasionally wrote articles on domestic life for the New York Tribune. Well-respected and well-known among the literary and artistic elite as independent, ambitious and intelligent. Married Francis Barlow, ten years her junior, on April 20, 1861, the day before he reported for duty as a private.
Civil War
Joined the U.S. Sanitary Commission in the summer of 1862, stationed at the Harrison House on the Virginia Peninsula, where her husband visited frequently. With the Commission, followed the Union Army to Antietam where she nursed her husband (by then a colonel commanding the 61st the 64th New York Infantry regiments) back to health following a grievous wound sustained in the Sunken Road fighting. Ten months later, crossed through Confederate lines at Gettysburg after the first day of fighting to reach her husband, who had been grievously wounded a second time, left for dead and captured. Though the wound was thought by doctors to be mortal, Francis survived under her care. Arabella continued her service until shortly before her death in 1864.
Postwar
N/A
Death
Died July 27, 1864, in Washington, D.C.., where she was convalescing after contracting typhus during her service with the Sanitary Commission at City Point, VA, during the Petersburg Campaign. She is buried in the Old Somerville Cemetery in Somerset County, N.J.
Quotes
“…certainly the most brilliant, cultivated, easy graceful, effective talker of womankind, and [she] has read, thought and observed much and well.” – Diarist George Templeton Strong
“In the crowd of ambulances, army wagons, beef-cattle, staff officers, recruits, kicking mules and so on, who should turn up but Mrs. Arabella Barlow, nee Griffith, unattended, but serene and self-possessed as if walking down Broadway. She is nursing the colonel…and never looked so well. Talked like a sensible, practical, earnest, warm-hearted woman…” – George Templeton Strong, Sep 1862 diary entry, after encountering Arabella in the streets of Sharpsburg
“On the evening of the 2nd on Chambersburg Street we were halted by two Confederate soldiers who had a lady in their charge. She was on horseback and proved to be the wife of General Barlow who had come through the Confederate lines under a flag of truce looking for her husband who had been severely wounded on July 1…” – Gettysburg civilian Daniel Skelly, describing Arabella searching the town for her husband
“She came among us like a ministering angel, her presence alone bringing comfort. Many a poor fellow owes his life to her tender care. We loved her as a mother.” – Private George W. Whitman (51st New York Infantry), reflecting on Arabella’s time nursing soldiers
“You say I am getting familiar with death. Yes; but death wears its most solemn aspect when it touches our individual lives. Sometimes it makes terrible voids in our hearts. I groaned aloud last night, so heavy was my heart when I knew I should not again see Mrs. Barlow.” – Helen Gibson, a nurse who worked with Arabella near Petersburg
“She nursed at hospital sites at Fredericksburg, Port Royal, White House and City Point with no thought but for those who were suffering and dying all around her” – Excerpt from the inscription on her grave marker