In 1865, the U.S. Army quartermaster general designated the original 3.76-acre prison cemetery as Florence National Cemetery. It contains not only the bodies of Union prisoners who died in Florence, but soldiers removed from Charleston, Cheraw, Darlington, and Marion, South Carolina. By 1874, of the remains of 2,969 men here, only 168 were known. The federal government had erected a brick superintendent’s lodge, flagstaff, and two gun monuments, and in 1877 a brick wall enclosed the cemetery. A second lodge was built in 1906, but the army removed it in 1970. By law, the secretary of war appointed a “meritorious and trustworthy” person to manage each cemetery, and to qualify an individual had to have been an army enlisted man disabled in service. Phillip R.R.M. Sattes was the first superintendent at Florence; while a private in the 1st Kentucky Infantry (U.S.), he was twice wounded in action. For decades, the only woman buried at this national cemetery was Florena Budwin, likely an alias. Purportedly married to a Union officer from Pennsylvania, Budwin disguised herself as a man in order to enlist. She and her husband were said to have been confined at Georgia’s Andersonville Prison, where he died. She was moved with other Union prisoners to Florence in fall 1864, and when she fell ill the camp doctor discovered her secret. Budwin was then moved into quarters separate from the men, and sympathetic women of Florence gave her food and clothing. After recovering, she remained at the prison as a nurse. She died in January 1865 and was buried here in Section D grave 2480, and her story appeared in newspapers nationwide for years. After Atlanta fell to the Union Army in September 1864, Gen. William T. Sherman began his “March to the Sea,” and Confederate authorities, fearing the Union Army would free prisoners held in southern Georgia, moved some 10,000 Union prisoners of war to the unfinished Florence Military Prison in October. A 16-foot-tall log stockade enclosed the hospital, tents, and other simple structures, and a swampy stream running through the 23-acre prison provided the only source of water. During the six months the prison operated, more than 25 percent of the 12,000 prisoners died, and the bodies were buried in one of two nearby cemeteries. Former prisoner Robert H. Kellogg recalled that the dead were piled one upon another until the wagon was filled, while prisoners dug trenches every day for the bodies of dead soldiers.