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Letter: Captain Sally’s heroism remembered

Editor, Gazette-Journal:

Upon seeing the photograph of Marilyn Iglesias impersonating Captain Sally in the March 14 issue of the Gazette-Journal, it reminded me of a friend of mine who said she was (and I believe ’tis true) a descendant of the family of Sally Tompkins.

My friend was living in Albuquerque, N.M., at the time she first came to Richmond for a visit in the ’70s; she very soon told us that she was anxious to visit a church where there was a memorial window honoring Sally Tompkins, who had lived in Mathews County, Virginia.

Although my friend lived in Illinois and New York most of her life, it seems that during the Civil War, male members of the Tompkins family refused to fight with the Confederacy and moved to Illinois. Although they left Virginia, it seems these Tompkins family men remembered their roots, knew about Sally’s participation in the war, and passed the stories of her heroism down through the family.

By the time we tried to visit the p...

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