The Tompkins Cottage Museum will open for the 2019 season this Saturday. The cottage will be open from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Saturday through October.

The small c. 1820 building, located on Brickbat Road in downtown Mathews, is named for Christopher Tompkins, a local sea captain, planter, prominent local merchant, and member of the state legislature, who lived at Poplar Grove. Tompkins bought the property in 1837 and is the first known owner.

Trained docents will be available to guide visitors on Saturdays at the cottage, which serves as headquarters for the Mathews County Historical Society.

Curator Becky Barnhardt explained that the east room, hall and rear shed room represent furnishings and personal items that would have been used by people who worked and lived there from the 1840s to the 1920s. The west shed room is dedicated to Tompkins’s daughter, Capt. Sally L. Tompkins, who was the first commissioned officer in an American military unit. Historical artifacts in this...