After an extensive period of renovation, the Mathews Museum, located at 200 Main Street in Mathews Court House, reopens to the public from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday.
The recently-acquired statue of Captain Sally Tompkins, Confederate nurse and hospital administrator and native of Mathews County, will be on display.
The 1,600-pound bronze statue, originally destined to be placed on Capitol Square in Richmond and later withdrawn due to social unrest, cost “upwards of one quarter of a million dollars,” to develop, said museum president Tom Robinson.
“Over $180,000 of that sum was contributed by Mathews citizens,” he said, and after extensive lobbying by Robinson and Marilyn Iglesias, president of the Sally Tompkins Chapter United Daughters of the Confederacy, it was decided that Mathews was the right place for it.
“We are pleased to have her here at our museum,” he said.
Following the exhibit, the statue will go back into storage until a permanent display site can be finished, Robinson said...