So who the heck is Mrs. Spindle…?
Well the truth is, we really don’t know. “Mrs. Spindle’s House” is featured in a number of Brady studio photographs of Centreville, and it looks like the house that you can see pictured on the left side of the photograph below. A Spindle family also lived in the Spindle Sears House. The woman standing there, beside the wagon piled high with furniture and her four young children (can you find all four?), this is our “Mrs. Spindle” — we don’t know if that is her name, but we think it is likely that she is from Centreville, so we had to use something suitably Centreville-like. 🙂
The photograph our “Mrs. Spindle” is part of “Brady’s Album Gallery” and was taken in 1862 by Brady studio photographer George Barnard. It was published in a number of forms – in a book, as a carte de visite, and as a stereocard (the 19th century version of a ViewMaster slide). The title is “Departure from the Old Homestead, Centreville.” The carte de visite has a couple of lines of a poem by Oliver Goldsmath printed on the back: “And trembling, shrinking from the spoilers hand/Far, far away, thy children leave the land.”
A stereocard version published later included the following explanation:
This is one of the familiar scenes during the war. Union families were persecuted by the Rebels and “bushwhackers,” and to escape this persecution and probable death, they would, when our troops came near enough to protect them, hastily gather up a little furniture, pile it on to an old wagon, and bidding goodby to their home, take up their march northward toward the land of freedom. “
We’re skeptical of this explanation. There were some Union sympathizers in Centreville, but most residents in the area supported the Confederacy. So it is possible that “Mrs. Spindle” was fleeing the newly established Union control of the town. Or, regardless of which side she favored, she may simply have felt uncomfortable being so close to the “seat of war” as Centreville was.
We use her image as a reminder of Centreville’s history. With that resolute face, all cheekbones and grim determination, she is emblematic of the people of Centreville, and all over Northern Virginia, who had to struggle directly with the consequences of a terrible Civil War. She also reminds us of Centreville’s resiliency, as the town came back from that devastation to become the thriving suburb we know today!
So if you see Mrs. Spindle make sure to click on her…she will surely take you to someplace interesting!