Sally Tompkins & Phoebe Yates: Stories of Confederate & Jewish women - 1st Woman military Officer in American history
Sharing brief stories of the ignored and forgotten on this International Women’s Week: Sally Louisa Tompkins (1833-1916) became the first woman military Officer in American history when she was commissioned as a Captain in the Confederate Army in 1961 (over 70 years before the US Army). She is best remembered for the hospital she opened and ran throughout the entire war and is honored for having the lowest mortality rate of any hospital during the War Between the State’s (Civil War) with a 94.5% success rate. She requested not to receive any pay from the Confederate government, insisting on using her personal fortune. Born in Matthew County, Virginia, Captain Sally was buried with full military honors at her childhood church cemetery. Phoebe Yates Pember was a Jewish southerner who escaped the ravages of war in Georgia to serve as a leader of Chimborazo, a Confederate hospital in Richmond Virginia that was reportedly the largest military hospital in the world in the 1860s. Pember se...