A group of Mathews residents gathered on May 19 at the home of Paul and Elsa Verbyla of Mathews, for a program about the Virginia Capitol Foundation’s Women’s Monument, to be erected on Capitol Square in Richmond beginning in 2019.

Colleen Messick, executive director of the Virginia Capitol Foundation, said the project has been a long time in the making, but has been making “super progress.”

The monument will feature a dozen statues of women who have been important figures in Virginia history, including Captain Sally Tompkins, who was born in Mathews County and served as a captain in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, nursing injured soldiers. Shaped like an oval, the monument will include a plaza containing a sundial and a glass wall on which will be etched the names of 250 additional women of distinction. The overall project will cost $3.4 million, said Messick, while each statue will cost $200,000. She said she would like to have Sally Tompkins be o...