Clarice Haines, Clarke School Teacher

 Clarice V. Haines was born in 1894 to Robert D. Haines, a farmer, and his wife, Rosa May Jerman Haines, according to the 1900 census and the Mellott and Haines Family Tree on Ancestry.com. The family probably lived in the Jermantown area, judging from Fairfax County property records. Clarice was the sixth amongst nine children, according to the 1900 census. In 1915, she won a prize in Domestic Science at Fairfax High School for the “Best Collection of Canned Fruit and Vegetables,” according to the Fairfax Herald.  Later that year, Clarice Vivian Haines graduated from Fairfax High School—she was the class “Prophet”—and in 1916 left for Harrisonburg with her sister to teach, according to the Fairfax Herald. The Herald may have garbled that she went to Harrisonburg to attend the teachers’ college; the 1940 census indicates that she completed two years of college. In 1917, she took a Sunday trip out to Great Falls in the company of several people, including Isaac Craig, according to the Fairfax Herald, a harbinger of a future relationship.

The Providence School District appointed Miss Clarice Haines to the Clarke School in July 1917, but by September the district appears to have redirected her to the Robey School, according to school board minutes.

“The [Idylwood] [S]chool operated from about 1895 to 1924,” according to Schools of Yesteryear #8 – Schools of the Providence District, a video history of Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS). The school’s original name was The Robey Station School, referring to a community on the nearby trolley line, according to the FCPS video. Several months after this aerial photo was taken in 1937, parents in the area petitioned the school board without success to reopen the school for the first through fourth grades, according to Fairfax Herald articles. In 1939, the board put the building up for sale, according to the Herald. The sale took place in 1941, according to county property records. The yellow lines correspond approximately to today’s property boundaries; the roads named in white are the roads of today. The image is from the Fairfax County Historical Imagery Viewer.
I’ve annotated this 1912 map of Rural Free Delivery routes in Fairfax County to show the locations of the Idylwood and Clarke schools, and I’ve highlighted the location of the Robey Station on the trolley line. The red “X” is the approximate location of the Idylwood School; the “Robey” underlined in blue just below the “X” is the nearby stop on the trolley line. The blue circle shows the general area of the Clarke School. The “Clarke” notation on the base map lacks an accompanying school symbol and thus is showing the location of the Clarke property rather than the location of the school. The map’s representations are in some cases approximations. For instance, Piney Branch runs much closer to the W&OD on the stretch between Hunter and Vienna than shown here, and for a portion of this segment it runs to the west of the right-of-way, rather than to the east.
This map orients you to the location of the former Idylwood School in relation to prominent features of today, such as the Beltway to the west and I-66 to the south. The base map is from Fairfax County’s Map Wizard.

After her teaching jobs in Fairfax County, Clarice was working as a clerk and living with her parents, according to the 1920 census. In mid-1920, she vacationed with family members in Atlantic City, according to the Fairfax Herald. Clarice married circa 1923, according to census information. Her husband was Isaac T. Craig, according to his death certificate. The couple had a son in 1923, according to Social Security data. The 1930 census records Clarice as living in a house in Fairfax County owned by her mother. It gives her name as Clarice Craig and identifies her as a widow. However, the 1930 census for Arkansas has her husband, Virginia-born Isaac Craig, living as a lodger in Hot Springs without evidence of a wife being present but with Isaac classified as married. An Arkansas death certificate indicates that Isaac T. Craig of Fairfax, Virginia, spouse of Clarice Craig, died in 1935 of several causes, including severe arthritis and severe degeneration of the liver and “Amyloid, degeneration of, liver and spleen, severe.” Isaac was a WWI-era veteran, according to VA records. He died at the Army-Navy General Hospital in Hot Springs, which had opened in 1933 and specialized in treating arthritis, according to The Sentinel-Record in Hot Springs

As of the census in 1940 and 1950, Clarice and her son lived on Route 50 with her brother and sister. She was working as a clerk in the Department of Commerce, according to the 1950 census. Clarice never appears to have remarried. Clarice V. Craig died in 1974 and is buried in Fairfax City Cemetery, according to findagrave.com.  

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