Captain Sally Tompkins

I posted a few facts about Captain Sally LouisaTompkins, CSA, earlier today on Facebook.  I stated that she was the only woman commissioned as an officer of the Confederacy.  Since publishing that post this morning, I found another source to claim that she was one of only two, the other, going by the name of Lucy Otey.  At any rate, Sally Tompkins was 28 years old and living in Richmond, Virginia when the Civil War started.  Once it began, a  gentleman named Judge John Robertson moved his family to the seemingly safer counrtyside and offered his Richmond home as a hospital for Sally to run as she saw fit.  As a member of St. James Episcopal, Sally worked lock-step with other ladies from the church, who volunteered their services and money to the newly christened, Robertson Hospital.

For the duration of the war, Robertson Hospital under the command of Captain Sally Louisa Tompkins, maintained the lowest mortality rate of any hospital, North or South.  Early on, Confederate President Jefferson Davis mandated that Confederate hospitals operate under the authority of the Confederate States government, and so he commissioned Sally Tompkins as an officer to enable the Confederacy to retain her ability to save more lives than anybody else.  It should be noted that while Captain Tompkins accepted the commission, she refused any pay for her nursing labors.  Scholars believe that her success rate was so great because of almost fanatical sanitation practices and liberal applications of turpentine to open wounds.  This is very interesting in light of the fact that bacteria had not yet been discovered.  Famous diarist, Mary Chestnut called Captain Sally "Our Florence Nightingale".  Captain Sally Tompkins remained in Virginia until the end of her life in 1916 and was buried at Christ Church in Matthews County.