Isabel Dyer, Clarke School Student

Isabel Corrin Dyer was born in 1898 to John Asa Dyer and Minnie S. Bryant Dyer, according to Isabel’s death certificate. Isabel was the second of John and Minnie’s children, according to census information.

The house where Isabel presumably spent some of her childhood appears to have been on Clarks Crossing Road between today’s Savannah Crossing and Timberview Courts, judging from a 1915 topographical map of Fairfax County, census and property records, and 1937 aerial imagery.

As of 1900, John Asa Dyer and his wife Minnie were probably raising their young family at a house on Clarks Crossing Road. This 1915 map indicates that a structure was on a parcel that John and Minnie formally acquired in 1920 under the partition of the property that had belonged to John’s parents. The 1900 census (below) suggests that the immediate neighbors of the Dyers were the Benjamin Clarke and Mary Smith families; Fairfax County property records indicate that the Clarke and Smith properties were located as above. Sources include county deeds F5:475, M6:245 & V8:402.
Isabel Dyer, born in 1898, is missing from this 1900 census record of her family, underscoring that census information, as invaluable as it is, is not perfect. Source: The 1900 U.S. census for the Providence District of Fairfax County, taken on 1 & 2 June 1900. From Ancestry.com

Regarding Isabel’s schooling, in 1906 at a young age she made the honor roll at the Clarke School, and the 1940 census indicates that she completed four years of high school after attending Clarke.  

“Isabel was a sweet and beautiful girl and an excellent pianist,” Barbara Perine Hymas writes in “The Dyer Family of Fairfax County, Virginia and Related Families.” In 1918, Isabel lost her brother, George Bryant Dyer, who was killed in action on the Western Front at the battle of the Meuse-Argonne, according to the Hymas book. Bryant, as he was known to the family, according to relative Virginia Rita, is one of the two namesakes for the American Legion post in Vienna. In 1919, Isabel married Pennsylvania native Ralph Romaine Sherman, a WWI navy veteran, according to the Hymas book, marriage records, and Pennsylvania records of military service. In 1921, Isabel and Ralph lost their first son, Bryant, 11 days after his birth, according to the boy’s death certificate. In 1922, they had their second child, John E. Sherman, according to Social Security records. 

In 1925 Isabel acquired a parcel on the Leesburg Pike to the west of Aline Avenue, and in 1937 she acquired an adjacent property, judging from Fairfax County property records and a plat in the Connie and Mayo Stuntz book, “This Is Tysons Corner, Virginia.”  The two parcels were located about where Gallows Road intersects with the Leesburg Pike today, vicinity the Olive Garden and CVS. In 1928, Isabel and Ralph acquired a one-acre property on Chain Bridge Road in Lewinsville and what is now McLean. As of April 1930, the family was living at the residence of Isabel’s parents and Ralph was an examiner for the federal government, according to census information.  By 1940, they were living at the property on Chain Bridge Road in McLean, judging from census and draft registration information. Isabel and Ralph had sold off the Leesburg Pike properties in 1937.

Isabel suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease, according to the Hymas history of the Dyer family. Isabel died at age 50 in 1949 and is buried in Andrew Chapel Cemetery, according to her death certificate.

Isabel Corrin Sherman nee Dyer obituary in Washington’s Evening Star newspaper, 12 February 1949.
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