Visiting Florence National Cemetery & The Grave Of Florena Budwin

After attending the Confederate Memorial Day service at Mount Hope Cemetery in downtown Florence, South Carolina (mentioned in my previous blog post) I drove about a half-mile down the road to visit the Florence National Cemetery -- as well as visit a specific grave on the site.

Florence National Cemetery is a 25 acre U.S. National Cemetery that contains the graves of over 12,000 U.S. military soldiers and veterans from various American wars. The National Cemetery is administered by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.

Florence National Cemetery began its history as a burial site for Union prisoners of war interred at the nearby Florence Stockade during the War Between The States (1861-1865).

Florence Stockade was built in late September of 1864 by the Confederate military. Most of these were Union prisoners transferred to the site by rail from the infamous Camp Sumter (better known to history as Andersonville after the nearby town in Georgia) ahead of Union General William T. Sherman's March To The Sea. The rest were either Union soldiers, or sailors, captured in actions at Charleston and the North Carolina coastal regions.

Of the estimated 12,000 to 18,000 Union prisoners of war held at Florence Stockade around 2,300 died of various camp diseases and harsh camp conditions during the five month period the stockade was in service. These prisoners were buried in 16 trenches half-a-mile from the stockade's boundaries on what would become the site of the National Cemetery. The Florence Stockade was abandoned by the end of February 1865, with most of the remaining prisoners being transferred north to the POW camp in Salisbury, North Carolina until the end of the War two months later.

The site of the burial trenches became a National Cemetery in 1865 with the remains of other Union soldiers from nearby American Civil War battlefield cemeteries were transferred and reburied there, bringing the number of Union war dead buried on site to around 3,000 men -- and one woman.

The woman buried among the Union dead is known to history as Florena Budwin.

According to the accounts of her story, Florena was a young woman possibly born about 1844 from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania who dressed up as a Union soldier so she could find and serve with her husband, a Union army officer. The couple supposedly served briefly together before he was either killed in battle, or dying in prison at Camp Sumter in mid-1864.

Budwin was then shipped by train with other Union POWs to Florence Stockade where she became ill with pneumonia and the camp physician, Doctor Josephus Hall, discovered her gender. She was provided with separate quarters and women in town provided her with women's clothing. Florena recovered and chose to remain near the stockade to help the local women nurse the sick prisoners and prison guards at the adjacent Wayside Hospital.

Sadly, Florena Budwin again fell ill and died at the Wayside Hospital on Wednesday, January 25, 1865. She is buried at the site of the Union trenches (Section D, Site 2480 of the National Cemetery), with her lone gravestone in the middle of one of the two large bare patches of land marking the site of the trenches. Her grave is a simple Union soldier's grave marker that bears her name and the date of her death.

Florena Budwin is believed to be the first woman to be buried in a U.S. National Cemetery.

The following are the photos I took of my visit to Florence National Cemetery. 

The grave of Private Florena Budwin listing the date of her death.
Note the copper pennies on top of her marker -- a show of respect
for her service.

I would like to add one more interesting story and connection between the Florence National Cemetery and your favorite blogger personally.

On the Roll of the Known Confederate Dead of Chester County, South Carolina which I reposted for this year's Confederate Memorial Day (May 10th) in memory of the 375 men and boys from my home county who did not survive the War Between The States, at number 362 you will find the name Private Theodore D. Wise. He was from Chester and served as in Company E, 3rd Battalion SC Reserves -- which served as camp guards at Florence Stockade during its existence. Many of the guards were members of the reserve units who were aged 15 to 17 years old.

Sadly, Private Wise would contract measles during an outbreak at the Stockade and pass away at the Wayside Hospital on Monday, December 26, 1864 at the age of 15 -- the youngest Confederate soldier from Chester County to die in the War. Theodore Wise place of burial is unknown -- although he's possibly buried in the mound at nearby Mount Hope Cemetery with the other Unknown Confederate Dead.

Theodore Wise died at the same hospital where Florena Budwin served as a nurse ministering to the sick before her own tragic death from disease a month later. It makes me wonder: did they know each other in that time? Did she offer him comfort as a nurse as he passed away? We can never truly know. Still, its interesting the way threads of history seem to intertwine along with the lives of those who lived it.

I went to Florence to honor and remember the sacrifices and services of both the Confederate dead honored on Confederate Memorial Day (May 10th) and the Union dead who will be honored later this month on U.S. Memorial Day (May 26th this year) -- all of them our American dead.

None of them are forgotten.

South Carolina Observes Two Memorial Days In May For American War Dead -- Lest We Forget

The guns have fallen silent, and may they always remain so.

During the month of May here in South Carolina, we observe two Memorial Days: Confederate Memorial Day (May 10th) a State holiday; and U.S. Memorial Day (May 29th) a Federal holiday observed on the last Monday of the month each year -- both to honor the men and boys who served in the War Between The States (American Civil War) 1861-1865.*

South Carolina sent tens of thousands of her sons, brothers, and husbands to fight in the War Between The States. About 60,000 men and boys of all social, racial and religious backgrounds fought with the Southern Confederacy to defend the newly independent State and their homes and families from unconstitutional invasion by federal forces. Another 5,400 African-American men fought with the Union forces among the ranks of the United States Colored Troops (USCT) to defend their new individual freedom and to preserve that same freedom for their own families.

Many of those same soldiers -- Union and Confederate -- never returned home and many of them never received proper burials far from the land of their birth. Some families never learned the ultimate fate of their loved ones.

The exposed skulls and bones of unburied Confederate soldiers near the Orange Plank Road
photographed in April, 1866 -- nearly two years after the Battle of the Wilderness was fought
there on May 5-7, 1864. Approximately 28,700 Americans (Union and Confederate) were
casualties during the battle.
Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Proper memorials to remember them were later built, sometimes decades after the end of the war, because of the high cost of building them in the war-damaged economy. Many others are buried in National and historic cemeteries and local church yards across South Carolina. The Confederate battle flags and United States flags these men fought under fly over these graves every year, placed there by patriotic veterans organizations, descendants of the soldiers, and thoughtful individuals that honor the memory of the dead.

It is to the memory of those sons of South Carolina, no matter their allegiances, who paid the ultimate sacrifice in that long and bloody war that this blog post is dedicated.

 Never Forget!

*Writer's Note: While this blog post explains why South Carolina honors American Civil War dead during the Month of May, US Memorial Day also honors all those in the United States armed forces who died in military service in every major and minor American conflict in this country's nearly 250 year history, especially men from South Carolina -- all of whom this blogger has nothing but the highest respect for their memories and service.

My Southern Hometown's Resident Union Soldier -- Private Charles F. Emerson, 15th Maine Infantry USA

The recently cleaned headstone of
Private Charles F. Emerson,
Co. G, 15th Maine Infantry Regiment, USA.
The only Union veteran buried among Confederate
soldiers in Evergreen Cemetery in
Chester, South Carolina.

Every year on the morning of the Fourth of July, I preform a solemn and important duty that I've continued for half my life. I travel into my hometown of Chester, South Carolina and visit the city's Elmwood Cemetery and arrive at the Confederate soldiers' section near the back of the cemetery.

Four rows of small, white granite markers stand as quiet testament of the town's role in the last year of the War Between the States (1861-1865) as an important railroad depot. The bodies of dead Confederate soldiers were unloaded from hospital trains and buried here in the final months of the War.

With the exception of three of the graves, all of them are marked simply with the words: Unknown Soldier CSA.

As a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and a resident Guardian, my volunteer duty is to check on and help maintain the graves of these men. These duties include cleaning the headstones at least once a year and ensuring that the graves are honored properly on certain occasions.

As always, on the Fourth of July, I arrive to place a new Confederate battle flag, or South Carolina State Flag, at the base of the grave monument in front of the section, usually replacing an old, faded one.

I walk among the grave stones, taking the time to check them over and determine the next time to clean them, or brush off bird droppings -- and then I come to the last row and one grave in particular.

Unlike the other men and boys buried at the site, the young man buried in this plot did not wear the hallowed gray and butternut of the Confederate citizen soldier, but rather the dark blue of the Union army that fought against these men during that terrible conflict.

Like all the others, I check the large and beautifully carved old granite headstone over, then I kneel down and replace an old, faded U.S. Flag with a newer one -- the only grave in the section that flies the Stars and Stripes.

Private Charles F. Emerson of the 15th Maine Infantry Regiment USA is not the only former Union soldier buried in the cemetery, but he is the only one buried in a section reserved for his former enemies, far from the State of his birth.

The story of how he came to be here is very interesting and it begins in the first year of the American Civil War.

The Confederate graves section of Evergreen Cemetery in Chester, South Carolina.
Private Emerson's gravestone is the only one decorated with a 35-Star U.S. Flag every year on
Confederate Memorial Day (May 10th) by members of the local United Daughters of the Confederacy
(UDC). His grave is located third from the left in the back row and the tallest and oldest headstone.

The 15th Maine Infantry Regiment was organized in Augusta, Maine in December of 1861 and its members mustered into Union service on Thursday, January 23, 1862, originally for a three-year enlistment. Nearly all of the regiment's members came from Kennebec County in the southern part of the state. Its commander throughout the war was Colonel Issac Dyer.

Charles Emerson of Pittstone, Maine, then only just turned 15 years old, joined Company G of the regiment alongside his twin brother, George F. Emerson. Both brothers served in the regiment throughout its various campaigns during the War Between The States.

The regiment was attached to Union Major General Benjamin F. Butler's New Orleans Expeditionary Corps from January to March 1862. Then later served in the  Department of the Gulf and District of West Florida in 1862 and during the Red River Campaign in the Trans-Mississippi theater and fought at the Battle of Sabine Crossroads (Mansfield) on Friday, April 8, 1864. Three months later the regiment served in the Eastern theater during the Battle of Fort Stevens on July 11-12, 1864, and then in the Army of the Shenandoah in April 1865. The 15th Maine served on provost duty during the Grand Review of the Armies in Washington, D.C. on May 23 - 24, 1865.

By the end of the war, the 15th Maine lost 348 men (including 3 officers) in the course of the War -- only 5 actually killed by combat-related deaths with the rest lost due to disease and illness.

Following the war's end, the 15th Maine was assigned to occupation duty in South Carolina and assigned to duty in the areas of Chester, Union, Lancaster, York, Cherokee, and Spartanburg Counties in the upstate area. The 15th Maine would serve here for a year before the regiment was formally discharged and mustered out of service on Thursday, July 5, 1866.

It was during this year of Southern occupation duty that Company G would have one final death.

Private Charles F. Emerson, who served four years in the War, died in Chester County on Wednesday, March 14, 1866. He was only 19 years old. The cause of death is listed in local historical records simply as "lung fever" (possibly pneumonia).

He was buried in a plot in Chester's Evergreen Cemetery where dozens of Confederate soldiers were buried by his brother, George, and comrades of the 15th Maine. The only Federal soldier buried on site and, at the time, the only Civil War soldier buried with a proper granite headstone.

The reason for this was that the Confederate soldiers, most of them having been wounded and died in transit on train and unloaded at the local train depot a mile from the cemetery at the time, were hastily buried in the plot and given wooden headboards. These wooden headboards were later maliciously used by occupying Union soldiers for firewood, or simply left to rot.

Because of a fire at the Chester City Hall around the turn of the century, the records identifying these men and boys in gray were lost to history. Later small stone markers listen simply with "C.S.A." were set to identify the locations of the graves.

Aside from Private Emerson, only one 86 year-old Confederate Veteran -- Private William Greene Parker, Co. G, Cobb's Legion Georgia Volunteers, who died in 1911 and asked to be buried with his former comrades -- had a proper headstone for a long time.

Private Charles F. Emerson and his twin brother, George F. Emerson, are listed on the roll of volunteers
who served in Co. G, 15th Maine Infantry Regiment USA. Emerson's death in 1866 is listed as "Died In
Service" the last member of the company to die before the unit was disbanded.
Images courtesy of the Maine State Archives

In 1994, after a couple of years of work, members of the Walker-Gaston Camp #86 Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) along with the local Boy Scouts Troop, installed proper U.S. government issued headstones for the Confederate veterans buried at the cemetery, replacing the former small stone markers. These new granite stones all bear the words: Unknown Soldier CSA.

Organizations like the Sons of Confederate Veterans continue to search for information in State archives to identify the rest of the soldiers in the Confederate section of Evergreen Cemetery to this day. To date only one of these veterans has been positively identified and a proper stone laid by the SCV in 2003.

Private Charles F. Emerson is buried in the upper left row of gravestones, his century-and-a-half marker is the tallest of the 56 graves in the section, and the only one marked with a U.S. Flag on Federal holidays and Confederate Memorial Day (May 10th in South Carolina).

His headstone reads:

In Memory Of
CHARLES F. EMERSON
of Pittstone, Maine.
A member of Co. G. 15th Maine
Vet. Vols. Who after service of
more than four years in
the United States Army Died at
Chester, SC. March 14th, 1866.
Aged 19 years 7 months
----
Comrade sleep thy work is done
Hope we lay thee down to rest
All thy days of toil are gone
And they art now forever blest.

A small U.S. government issued marker was also added by the Sons of Confederate Veterans to the grave of Private Emerson in front of his headstone in 1994. This marker has a Christian cross and is inscribed:

Charles F. Emerson
Pvt. Co. G 15 Maine Inf.
Civil War
Nov. 23, 1846    Mar. 14, 1866

A more modern granite marker honoring Private Emerson was
placed on site by the Walker-Gaston Camp #86 Sons of
Confederate Veterans (SCV) in 1994.
Note the 36-Star U.S. Flag -- the Union flag in 1866 at the time
of Private Emerson's death.

In doing research for this article, I wanted to discover if I could find the grave of Private Emerson's twin brother, George, who survived the war and returned to their home state of Maine.

What I found was quite interesting.

Private George F. Emerson is buried under a monument in Whitefield Cemetery in the town of Whitefield, Lincoln County, Maine. He died in 1897, aged 51 years.

On his monument is also included the name of his twin, which reads:

CHAS. F. EMERSON
Born A.D. 1846
Died at Chester
S.C. A.D. 1865

The grave of Private George F. Emerson,
twin brother of Charles F. Emerson, in
Whitefield Cemetery, Whitefield, Maine.
Photo courtesy of Find-A-Grave.com.

A family connection between hundreds of miles and two men buried in two different American States, but still remembered together in stone.

Every year on U.S. Memorial Day and the Fourth of July Chester County's resident Yankee soldier, Private Charles Emerson, receives a new U.S. flag.

Though he was a member of an invading Federal army that fought against my own Confederate ancestors, he is also a young man buried far from the place he was born and barely had time to grow up in. Anyone who had a family member who went away to war and never came home cannot help but feel for that.

More so, he was an American veteran in my eyes and deserves to be honored no less than the other Southern veterans he was buried with. Respecting his grave yearly with the flag of the country he fought for is no chore for me.

Lest We Forget.


A special thanks to the following for the information contained in this article:
The Chester County (SC) Historical Society, the Maine State Archives online, and Find-A-Grave.com.
Other sources include: The Story of the Maine Fifteenth by Henry H. Shorey (1890) Pages 217-218.
All photographs in the article were taken by the author, except where noted.

Union Soldier's Graves in Rose Hill Cemetery

The entrance to Rose Hill Cemetery in downtown York, SC.

Located in the Southeastern corner of Rose Hill Cemetery in downtown York, South Carolina, are eight graves that seem to be noticeably set apart from the others beneath a tall tree. Its as if the occupants of those graves were buried away from the rest due to some religious objection, or were the victims of some vile and incurable 19th century disease. 

These eight lonely graves belong to Union soldiers. Members of two units of US troops who occupied York County and the surrounding area during the Reconstruction Era (1865 - 1877) who died during that time due to illness, or possibly violence from local resistance to federal enforcement of Radical Reconstruction policies that barred ex-Confederates from voting, holding office, or meeting in groups -- including funerals and church services -- without federal soldiers present.

Some of these men, members of Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer's 7th US Cavalry under the command of Major Lewis Merrill, were present in York County in 1871 during the height of violent activities involving the first Ku Klux Klan. Their efforts led largely to the suppression of violence against former slaves and those who worked to ensure their equal treatment under the law.  

Eight Union soldiers, members of the local occupation forces
who died during the Reconstruction Era.

No matter their reason for being in York County at that particular time, these eight men sadly died in another State far from their homes and families who never saw them again. No matter if they are a Confederate soldier from Georgia buried in Pennsylvania, or a young Union man from Maine who died of pneumonia in South Carolina. They deserve to be remembered and respected for their individual lives as any other American veteran of the War Between the States (1861 - 1865) who fell far from home. 

For that reason this blogger honors them by placing the flags they served under at their graves and present to you readers the names of these Union soldiers. 

Private Thos Quinton
Co. C 18th US Infantry

Private G.H. Whitemore
Co. L 7th US Cavalry

Private Samuel Brown
Co. L 7th US Cavalry

Private Patrick Walsh
Co. C 18th US Infantry

Private Adolphus Cash
Co. D 7th US Cavalry

Private G.W. Windsor
Co. C 18th US Infantry

Private Jno Shea
Co. C 18th US Infantry

Sergeant Patrick Garr
Co. C 18th US Infantry

 We've been fighting today on the old camp ground,

Many are lying near;

Some are dead, and some are dying,

Many are in tears.

Many are the hearts that are weary tonight,

Wishing for the war to cease; 

Many are the hearts look for the right, 

To see the dawn of peace. 

~ "Tenting on the Old Campground" 

A popular Union Civil War song.

As always I hope you enjoyed this blog post. Have a wonderful Dixie day, and y'all come back now, ya hear?