CAPTAIN SALLY TOMPKINS

"The Florence Nightingale of Richmond" (1833 - 1916)

During the Civil War, the women of the south gave endlessly of their time to nurse the sick and the wounded Confederate soldiers. Richmond women were no exception. One of the notable nurses was Sally Tompkins.

Sally Louisa Tompkins was born in Matthews County on November 9, 1833. She later moved to Richmond after her father's death.

During the Civil War, Tompkins, like so many other Southern women, was moved by the sight of loaded trains holding wounded and/or sick soldiers. However, the Confederate government had little time to set up an organized hospital system. Tompkins started the Robertson Hospital and returned so many soldiers to the the ranks that in the fall of 1861 Confederate President Jefferson Davis titled her "Captain of Cavalry, unassigned." Captain Sally Tompkins was the first and only woman to be given an officer's title before the U.S. Army's nurses Corps were created in 1901.