Cecilia Payne was fifteen years old, living with her father on Doctor Wunder's farm in Alexandria County, Virginia in the shadow of the nation's Capital when the Civil War landed on their doorstep. What had been a budding and affable community of farmers, war heroes, businessmen, and workmen nestled between two hills was now split with Virginia's secession and invasion by Federal troops in May 1861. What were once neighbors, almost overnight became either enemies of Virginia, the Federals or both living in constant fear. Separating those two hills was a wonderful spring that fed a small creek where young boys and girls escaped their parent's prying eyes. Their little place of refuge paid witness to celebrations, romance, and later marauding scouting parties, skirmishes, and death. When Alexandria County returned to Virginia in the Retrocession of 1845, it did much to free it from Washington's ire, but also set the stage for its occupation, becoming a key staging point for the war fifteen years later. Cecilia and her father struggled to survive by hauling goods to the many Union Army camps that sprung up on their lands, becoming witnesses to the injustices of war and how to live within a sea of strange men. The war tested her family, friendships and even her love shared with a young Union Army deserter. Yet before the last year of the war she would lose nearly everyone she loved vowing to leave up-county and never return. Now seven years after the war, she and her daughter were back to settle her family's affairs with the Southern Claims Commission. This is a story about a young Cecelia growing up quickly in a suburb of Washington at the start of the Civil War. More importantly, this is a story of real people, experiencing real events in our history.