![\"Speiden](\"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/speiden_house.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Speiden home image provided by the Manassas Museum System.<\/em><\/p>\n The white house with green shutters and matching green roof is a well-known landmark in the city of Manassas, Va. That\u2019s partly because noted architect Albert Speiden designed and lived in the home and partly for another reason.<\/p>\n Reddick<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cPeople believe the house is haunted,\u201d explains Meaghan Devlin Reddick \u201908.<\/p>\n While working on her master\u2019s degree in the history of decorative arts from George Mason University-Smithsonian Associates in 2012, Reddick landed an internship with the Manassas Museum System, which includes the museum located in Old Town Manassas as well as several historical sites.<\/p>\n Curator Mary Helen Dellinger assigned Reddick, whose interest is in clothing and accessories, with organizing the system\u2019s costume and textiles collection. The pieces had recently been moved out of storage to the bedroom of a historic home, which had been bequeathed to the Manassas Museum System by Virginia Speiden Carper, daughter of the architect who designed the home. When Reddick would enter the home to catalogue the collection, she always made a point to go straight up to the bedroom where the clothing and textiles were stored. \u201cYou\u2019re alone in a big house that people say is haunted,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a little creepy. I wasn\u2019t going to explore.\u201d<\/p>\n Until, that is, one day when Reddick had a strange compulsion to look around.<\/p>\n \u201cI came in one morning, and I felt. . . you could say called or that I had an inkling to go straight into the kitchen,\u201d she recalls.<\/p>\n “Tailor Made: Vintage Fashions From the Museum\u2019s Collection Unveiled” features textiles from the 1890s to the 1950s pulled exclusively from the museum\u2019s collection. Included are examples of wedding wear, party dresses, children\u2019s clothing, and sporting wear. Cocurated by Mary Helen Dellinger and Meaghan Reddick, “Tailor Made” will remain open to the public through September 24, 2017.<\/p><\/div>\n From there, Reddick could see the screened-in porch, where she spotted a box of music magazines from the 1930s. \u201cI thought, \u2018I need to bring those in,\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Reddick carried the box to the music room and dropped it in front of a piano. As she straightened up, she noticed a Hollins diploma on the wall. Virginia, it turns out, was a 1930 graduate. Reddick shivered from chills.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like the world has more order than we give it credit for,\u201d Reddick says. \u201cI just felt close, like I was supposed to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n Reddick believes some force in the universe \u2014 maybe Virginia Speiden Carper, maybe not \u2014 wanted her to see the diploma, to know she and Virginia were connected by green and gold threads across history. \u201cSince that day, I felt a strong connection to Virginia Speiden Carper, her home, and the costume collection,\u201d Reddick wrote in a January letter to Hollins.<\/p>\n Carper, who died in 2005 at the age of 96, willed her family home to the city with the intent that the Manassas Museum System would, one day, showcase it as a historic landmark. Some neighbors of the home, however, balked at the idea. Currently, city officials are trying to decide whether to continue keeping up the home or to return it to the descendants to be sold, according to Dellinger.<\/p>\n Carper<\/p><\/div>\n Whatever happens to the home, Carper already made quite a contribution to Manassas\u2019 historical record. Her obituary lists her as a member of the Manassas Museum Associates, who worked to initially establish the city\u2019s museum. After her father\u2019s death, Carper also donated hundreds of his drawings of buildings and his drafting tools to the museum.<\/p>\n Like Reddick, Carper developed an interest in recording history at a young age. She glued mementos ranging from train tickets to programs from Hollins concerts into two scrapbooks she kept of her college years. Over the course of her long life, Carper carefully safeguarded other Hollins items, including exam blue books, a planner, and her textbooks. Dellinger gifted those items to the archives at Wyndham Robertson Library.<\/p>\n Carper arrived at Hollins from her home in Manassas in the fall of 1926. During her college years, Carper served as a member of the Hollins Choir, the Choral Club, and the Ensemble Club. In 1928, Carper received a letter from Hollins President Matty Cocke, who commended her for her \u201cexcellent progress\u201d and offered her a scholarship earmarked for a music student who plans on a teaching career.<\/p>\n After graduating in 1930, Carper returned to Manassas, where she taught piano lessons in the Speiden home to many generations of Manassas youth.<\/p>\n Andy Harrover took piano lessons from Carper, as did his mother. \u201cShe was strict,\u201d says Harrover, who happens to be the father of Erin Harrover \u201919. \u201cShe would not put up with any foolishness.\u201d<\/p>\n At their 1990 reunion, from left to right: Virginia Speiden Carper, Mary Clemens Paul, Dorothy Quarles Dick, Meg Baker Hicks, and Florence Underwood Adams.<\/p><\/div>\n Carper didn\u2019t retire from teaching the piano until the age of 90. She served as organist for the Manassas Baptist Church for more than five decades and published several two-piano arrangements, some of which are housed at Hollins.<\/p>\n Throughout Carper\u2019s life, she stayed in touch with Hollins friends and attended all of her reunions. She also remembered Hollins in her estate. A plaque hangs in the Wyndham Robertson Library that credits continuing maintenance of the building to Carper, who gave the gift in honor of her cousin Marian Speiden Bayne \u201931, who served as a librarian at Hollins for several years.<\/p>\n In the summer of 2016, Dellinger invited Reddick, who had graduated from George Mason with a Master of Arts degree in 2014, to return to the Manassas Museum System as cocurator of an exhibit. \u201cTailor Made: Vintage Fashions from the Museum\u2019s Collection Unveiled\u201d opened in May and continues through September. The exhibit features textiles from the 1890s to the 1950s.<\/p>\n Collins<\/p><\/div>\n Last January, Reddick came to the museum for a meeting and met Emily Collins \u201919, then a Hollins sophomore who was spending J-Term interning at the museum. Collins would later work with Reddick, setting up display cases of accessories as a \u201csneak peek\u201d for the upcoming exhibit.<\/p>\n Collins spent the last day of her internship in January working with Reddick in the Speiden home. She\u2019s not convinced that it\u2019s haunted one way or another. \u201cIt very well could be,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think it\u2019s as haunted as some of the rooms at Hollins.\u201d<\/p>\n Even so, Collins shares Reddick\u2019s feeling that she was somehow destined to find herself in the Speiden home.<\/p>\n \u201cI was meant to be here,\u201d she says. \u201cI was meant to meet Meaghan. Yeah. . . kind of like fate.\u201d<\/p>\n Beth JoJack is a Roanoke writer who contributes frequently to <\/strong><\/em>Hollins<\/strong> magazine.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Alumnae believe they were destined to discover Hollins connection in historic Manassas home. By Beth JoJack \u201998 Speiden home image provided by the Manassas Museum System. The white house with green shutters and matching green roof is a well-known landmark […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7694,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[70],"class_list":["post-7594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-summer-2017"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7594"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7695,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7594\/revisions\/7695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Meaghan](\"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/reddick.jpg\")
\nBecause Virginia Speiden Carper\u2019s spirit is rumored to still reside in the home, visitors are careful to always extend a courteous greeting. \u201cWhen you go in, you say, \u2018Hi\u2019 to Virginia and \u2018Goodbye\u2019 to Virginia when you leave,\u201d explained Reddick. \u201cEverybody does that.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Manassas](\"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/collection.jpg\")
Preservers of history<\/h4>\n
![\"Virginia](\"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/carper.jpg\")
![\"Reunion](\"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/reunion.jpg\")
A matter of destiny<\/h4>\n
![\"Emily](\"http:\/\/www.hollins.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/collins.jpg\")