At the Florence National Cemetery in Florence, South Carolina, are buried the remains of over 2000 unknown Union soldiers that died at the nearby Florence Stockade prisoner of war camp (see link for a previous post on the Florence Stockade). They are buried in two large fields one on each side of the sign below.

In the center of one of those two fields sits a solitary headstone.

It belongs to a woman named Florena Budwin who died on January 25, 1865, in the final months of the war.

She was the first woman buried under a headstone with a female name on it in a National Cemetery. Despite that almost nothing is known about her. Some of what is known is probably wrong in an era where people didn’t carry any means of identification, and names in official records were often misspelled. In addition, women were not allowed to enlist in the Union Army and those that did made every attempt to conceal their identity and as a result served under assumed names (at least their first name). Anywhere from 300-500 women actually did serve because often times physical exams on entry concerned themselves only with whether people met the minimum requirement for firing a rifle. That meant that you needed a finger to pull the trigger and four incisors (canine teeth) to tear open the packaging surrounding the bullet in order to load it and the gunpowder down the barrel of the rifle. The term “4F” used to describe people that failed their entry physicals in the military evolved from this practice (no 4 Front teeth).

An article about her appeared in the Helena Independent on page 3 of the June 24, 1890, edition of the paper, which appears in its entirety in the sources. In it Samuel Elliott, a veteran of the Seventh PA then living in Helena is interviewed. Elliott was captured at the Battle of the Wilderness on May 5, 1864, and sent to Andersonville. He stated “I knew the female prisoner at Andersonville, having seen her frequently pass our detachment on her way to the swamp for water. I remember her as a woman rather above the medium height, sanburnt, with long, unkempt hair. Her clothing consisted of a rough gray shirt, a pair of worn-out army trousers, and what was once a military cap, but scarcely enough of it was left to afford protection from the burning sun. Her husband was also in the prison, but what became of him I am unable to say. When the prisoners were removed from Andersonville to Florence, between September 6 and 12, 1864, she was among the number, and shortly after our arrival there her sex was discovered by the rebel authorities and she was taken, as rumor had it, to be a nurse in the hospital.”

“As to her husband, I never knew what became of him. I never heard of his being killed. I heard her spoken of by the older prisoners as a married woman. Our detachment at Andersonville was stationed on the north of the prison’s old stockade, about 500 yards from the main entrance. She must have been in the detachment, there being 100 to each detachment, adjoining ours. The camp here was not laid off in streets, or were the brush huts laid off in any order. There were winding paths leading to the swamp near the entrance, where the prisoners obtained water. Her hut was never invaded, and she was cared for by two men who guarded and looked after her, ready to protect her from insult, should any be offered, and they always treated her with great respect themselves.”

Although Elliott never mentions her by name it is clear he is referring to the woman who identified herself in Florence as Florena Budwin. Her National Cemetery internment card from Ancestry.com is shown below. It identifies her as the wife of Captain Budwin but there was no Captain Budwin in the Union Army.

There is no record of anyone with the last name of Budwin serving in the Union Army. Mr. Elliott verifies the story of her sex being discovered in Florence and that she was removed to serve as a nurse in a Florence hospital. She died shortly thereafter likely from an infection she acquired there. If her husband was a Captain it is very unlikely he would have been imprisoned at Andersonville. Very few officers were sent there and there is no record of a Captain Budwin dying at Andersonville. She was allegedly from the Philadelphia area but even that knowledge has not helped in determining her real name. She would have had to have given some name when it was discovered she was a woman at the Florence stockade. Did she choose Florena because she was in Florence? Budwin was not her last name based on enlistment records unless she and her husband gave a false name when they enlisted. One hundred and sixty years later we still do not know the real name of the woman buried in the “Lone Woman’s Grave” in the open field in the Florence National Cemetery.

Sources

From the Helena Independent June 24, 1890 page 3