The younger of two sisters to attend the Burwell School, Sally Bunting attended in 1855. During her time at the school, Mrs. Burwell writes of her in a November 27, 1855 letter to her daughter Frances Armistead Burwell : "...since I've commenced this letter I've had to stop...to give Sally Bunting who has a cold a seidlidtz powder..." [1]
Sally Bunting was the granddaughter of a North Carolina governor Gabriel Holmes on her mother's side and the great-granddaughter of a Revolutionary War hero and original member of Congress Richard Clinton on her father's side [2].