Mathews native Captain Sally Tompkins is being honored as one of only a dozen Virginia women who will have bronze statues of their likenesses installed as part of the Virginia Women’s Monument on Capitol Square in Richmond.
The only problem is that the project is due for completion in October, and there’s not enough money yet to pay the $200,000 cost of her statue.
The Mathews County Historical Society encourages those with an interest in the statue to donate. The project is sponsored by the Virginia Capitol Foundation, a private-sector nonprofit organization dedicated to enhancing the educational, cultural and economic potential of Capitol Square.
Historical society spokesman Reed Lawson said the historical society can’t donate funds to another 501(c)(3)
nonprofit, but that individual members and other local residents are supporting it to the extent that they can.
Half of the funding needed for the statue has been donated.
The monument
Voices from the Garden: The Virginia Women’s Monument will feature women who made significant contributions to Virginia history, said a press release. Funding for four statues has been raised, and they have already been commissioned. The women they will represent are Cockacoeske, chief of the Pamunkey Indian Tribe in the mid-1600s; Anne Burras Laydon, who arrived in Jamestown in 1608 and survived the starving time; Virginia E. Randolph, the child of former slaves who became a successful teacher and a leader in education in the early 1900s; and Adele Clark, who championed the arts and the women’s suffrage movement in the early 1900s.
The total cost of the statues is $2.4 million, said Lawson, and the VCF is still $700,000 short of that goal. Each statue will be commissioned as the money for it is raised, she said.
The statues will be placed on an oval-shaped plaza with a glass wall etched with names of other important women in Virginia history. It has already been installed, said the release, and the etched names include Pocahontas, the daughter of Chief Powhatan, who saved Captain John Smith’s life in the early 1600s.
The remaining seven statues will be of Mary Draper Ingles, who was taken by the Shawnee during the French and Indian War but escaped and traveled 600 miles back to her home; Martha Washington, the wife of President George Washington; Clementina Rind, who took over operation of the Virginia Gazette newspaper after the death of her husband in the 1700s; Elizabeth Keckly, a slave who became Mary Todd Lincoln’s seamstress and established an association to support recently freed slaves and wounded soldiers; Maggie L. Walker, the first African-American woman to charter a bank in the United States; Sarah G. Jones, the first African-American woman to pass the Virginia Medical Examining Board’s examination; and Laura S. Copenhaver, who served as the director of the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation and expanded southwestern Virginia’s agricultural economy.
Capt. Sally Tompkins
Lawson said that Tompkins, who moved to Richmond with her mother and siblings after her father Christopher Tompkins died, was a humanitarian who was commissioned as a captain of the cavalry by Confederate President Jefferson Davis in 1861.
Although not a trained nurse, Tompkins had opened the highly effective Robinson Hospital for Confederate soldiers at the beginning of the war, and the only way she could receive hospital supplies from the military was if she were an officer in the army. She operated the hospital for no pay and treated 1,333 casualties there throughout the course of the war. Because of her skill, only 73 of them died, according to a biographical chronology of Tompkins’ life.
Tompkins moved to Port Royal, Virginia, in 1880 and became active in church and the community, often caring for the sick. In 1905, she moved back to Richmond and lived at the Home for Confederate Women, but continued to travel and remain active.
In 1916, at the age of 82, Tompkins died of complications from nephritis. She was interred with full military honors at Christ Episcopal Church cemetery on Williams Wharf Road in Mathews, next to her sister Elizabeth. Nine years later, in 1925, a granite monument was placed at her grave by Confederate memorial associations.
Donations
Donations may be made to Tompkins’s statue by mail, online or by telephone. To donate by mail, send a check to the Virginia Capitol Foundation, P.O. Box 396, Richmond, Va. 23218. Designate Women’s Monument—Sally Tompkins in the memo line.
Telephone a donation in by calling 804-786-1012, or donate online at https://virginiacapitol.gov. For more information, e-mail cmessick@virginiacapitol.gov.