Presidio
1 Lincoln Boulevard
This is the entrance to the National Cemetery within the San Francisco Presidio.
In 1885, the War Department issued general order no 133 designating 9.5 acres west of the Main Post as San Francisco National Cemetery. This site was not the first burial ground at the Presidio. Others existed well before the U.S. Army established a permanent post there in 1847. A Spanish burial ground was situated near present-day Building 105. It appears possible that as early as 1854, Army personnel began burying their deceased in the area that was to become San Francisco National Cemetery.
Six acres were added to the west side of the National Cemetery in 1896, just two years before the Spanish American War dramatically increased both military activity at the Presidio and the number of burials at the cemetery. A total of 4,563 burials had taken place by 1904. Additions at the south side of the grounds increased the cemetery’s size to 28.3 acres by 1932.
In 1947 the army opened Golden Gate National Cemetery ( a magnificent area as well) at San Bruno and announced that San Francisco National Cemetery, which had by then received 22,000 interments, was closed to further burials due to lack of plots. Later, small parcel additions did allow for a limited number of subsequent burials. Signed by President Richard Nixon in 1973, the National Cemeteries Act transferred 82 of the United States’ 84 national cemeteries—including San Francisco National Cemetery—from the U.S. Army to the Veterans Administration. San Francisco National Cemetery is presently maintained by the National Cemetery Administration, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
This was the original gate to the National Cemetery. In the 1930s, this gate was relocated to the cemetery’s northwest entrance, and the new gate was constructed at the cemetery’s main entrance.
Plan of San Francisco National Cemetery, 1886. Department of Veterans Affairs, National Cemetery Administration, History Collection
According to Veteran’s Affairs Department two unusual interments at San Francisco National Cemetery are “Major” Pauline Cushman and Miss Sarah A. Bowman. Cushman’s headstone bears the inscription “Pauline C. Fryer, Union Spy,” but her real name was Harriet Wood. Born in the 1830s, she became a performer in Thomas Placide’s show Varieties and took the name Pauline Cushman. She married theater musician Charles Dickinson in 1853, but after her husband died of illness related to his service for Union forces, she returned to the stage. During spring 1863, while performing in Louisville, Ky., she was asked by the provost marshal to gather information regarding local Confederate activity. From there she was sent to Nashville, where she had some success conveying information about troop strength and movements. In Nashville, she was also captured and nearly hanged as a spy. She returned to the stage in 1864, to lecture and sell her autobiography. Entertainer P.T. Barnum promoted her as the “Spy of the Cumberland” and through Barnum’s practiced boostership she quickly gained fleeting fame. After spending the 1870s working the redwood logging camps, she remarried and moved to the Arizona Territory. By 1893 she was divorced, destitute and desperate; she applied for her first husband’s military pension and returned to San Francisco, where she died from an overdose of narcotics allegedly taken to soothe her rheumatism. Members of the Grand Army of the Republic and Women’s Relief Corps conducted a magnificent funeral for the former spy. “Major” Cushman’s remains reside in Officer’s Circle.
The other is Sarah Bowman, also known as “Great Western,” a formidable woman over 6 feet tall with red hair and a fondness for wearing pistols. Married to a soldier, she traveled with Zachary Taylor’s troops in the Mexican War helping to care for the wounded, for which she earned a government pension. After her husband’s death she had a variety of male companions and ran an infamous tavern and brothel in El Paso, Texas. Bowman left El Paso when she married her last husband. The two ended up at Fort Yuma, where she operated a boarding house until her death from a spider bite in 1866. She was given a full military funeral and was buried in the Fort Yuma Cemetery. Several years later her body was exhumed and reburied at San Francisco National Cemetery.
In 1915, this concrete rostrum was built to hold official services.
