Florena Budwin

Who was Florena Budwin?

Florena Budwin was a Union Army soldier from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania who enlisted with her husband in the Civil War in order to stay with him and died of complications of pneumonia. She was buried in Florence National Cemetery, the first woman soldier to be afforded that honor.

In mid-1864, she was captured and confined at the Confederacy's most notoriously brutal prisoner of war concentration camp, Andersonville, where some reports state that her husband died. However, Budwin herself stated that her husband died in battle, after which she was captured. She remained at Andersonville until it was threatened by Union forces, and was then transferred to the Florence Stockade in Florence, South Carolina later that year. There, she attended to sick prisoners until she herself became ill with pneumonia; when a doctor gave her medical attention he discovered her sex, after which Budwin was given special treatment, including donations of food and clothing from local women. However, she died shortly thereafter at the age of 20 on January 25, 1865, less than a month before sick Union prisoners of war were released by the Confederacy.

An estimated 16,000 Union prisoners were held captive in the Florence Prison Stockade between September 1864 and February 1865. In that short period of time, 2,322 prisoners died from malnutrition and disease. The owner of a plantation adjacent to the prison allowed the dead to be buried in trenches on his property. This area was later established as the Florence National Cemetery. A plain marble headstone there bears Florena's name and the date of her death. She is believed to be the first woman to be buried in a national cemetery.