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Vale School and William Hervey Fox.

Although the county's Dranesville school district secured property in 1880 for a school, its precise construction date is unknown. School records for the early 1880s are incomplete; also, the community was unnamed until 1883 when a "Vale" post office opened. An 1883 surveyor’s plat, however, shows cleared land and the notation “Sch. House” at the site.
   In the fall of 1911, the Dranesville school district constructed a new graded school in Floris. The following summer William Hervey Fox (1848-1928), a prominent Vale resident who served as a Trustee of the Dranesville District School Board was tasked with taking down the old three-room Floris school complex and re-using it for “school purposes.” Accordingly, by the autumn of 1912, two Dranesville schools, Vale and Forestville, had new additions. These two recent photos show the Vale addition, which was constructed to adjoin the older schoolhouse. In her memoirs, Mary Virginia Miller (1921-2005), a student at Vale School from 1927 to 1931, reveals that younger children used the school's newer room, while students who attained the rating of “fourth grader” were promoted to the “big room.” (Photos courtesy of Leigh Family (Fox); bottom right: Carol Cross; others, P. Strat)