Remembering Captain Sally Tompkins, CSA
Members of Captain Sally Tompkins United Daughters of the Confederacy Chapter 2626 placed a wreath on her grave in memory of her birthday.
Sally Louisa Tompkins (November 9, 1833 – July 25, 1916) was a Confederate nurse and the first woman to have been formally inducted into an army in American history. She may have been the only woman officially commissioned in the Confederate Army. She is best remembered for privately sponsoring a hospital in Richmond, Virginia to treat soldiers wounded in the American Civil War. Under her supervision, she had the lowest death rate of any hospital Union or Confederate, during the Civil War. She has been remembered as the "Angel of the Confederacy".
Sally Tompkins was born on November 9, 1833, at Poplar Grove in the Tidewater Region of Virginia's Middle Peninsula. She was the youngest of Colonel Christopher Tompkins' eight children. Colonel Tompkins eventually became a very wealthy merchant, doing business in Mathews County, Norfolk, and Richmond, Virginia. On August 16, 1838, Colonel Tompkins died. Sally was almost five years old at the time.[4]
Tompkins' older sister, Elizabeth, had been active in restoring the local Christ Church, an Episcopal church that had fallen into disrepair. Elizabeth and Sally were very close to each other. Tompkins was devastated when three of her sisters (Martha, Harriet, and Elizabeth) died only a few weeks apart due to a local epidemic in 1842.[6Tompkins nursed the sick in the local community, both free and enslaved As well as her service as a nurse in the War of Northern Aggressio.
Upon her death in 1916, Sally Tompkins was buried with full military honors at Christ Church in Mathews County. She joins the ranks of women like Clara Barton who responded to the urgent needs which were presented during the Civil War, especially after the Battle of First Bull Run when the realities of warfare became stark in both the Union and Confederate capital cities. They helped develop nursing into the skilled profession it was to become. Sally Tompkins reported obsession with cleanliness led to progress in sanitation during treatment. Her proven lower mortality rates as a result are exceptionally notable among her many legacies to the United States and medical providers everywhere, practices still in widespread use.