Clarice Selina Pearce

Effie Irene Pearce's scrapbook includes a studio photo of Clarice Pearce taken about 1870, on the same page as one of her father and of his grandson J W E Pearce, in which she looks rather as if she has Down's Syndrome, but it is so badly scratched that it impossible to tell.

On another page there is a photo (perhaps from a printed prospectus) of "Hazelhurst Collegiate School, Weston Super Mare;" with a handwritten note on it 'Aunt Clarice Pearce' while underneath it is written 'Summer term,' with no year given and no explanation. Another photo on the same page is dated 1914, so if that is the year by then Clarice Pearce would have been about 64 - rather old to be teaching, unless she was the headmistress.

The only other reference to her in the scrapbook is a black-edged note of her death:
"In Loving Memory of Clarice Selina Pearce, Who entered into Rest, August 7th, 1923, Aged 72 years"
"So He Giveth His Beloved Sleep"
Weston-Super-Mare.

Euphemia Isabella Chaplin contributed a poem (as she often did) to the scrapbook on the same page which was also dated August 1923, so may have been about Clarice, but contains it no clues:

"So Angel-guarded may'st thou tread
The narrow path which few may find,
And at the end look back, nor dread,
To count the vanished years behind,
And pray that she whose hand doth trace
This heart-warm hope - when life is past -
May meet and know thy long lost face
In God's own glorious light at last". If she died in 1923 aged 72 (which she did), she must have been born in 1851, not 1837.

Douglas Grant Pearce confirms that the censuses make her birth 1851. He writes: She was a school governess with Priscilla and Emma in 1881, co-principal in 1891. In 1901, she was the principal of a girl’s school in Wales. She died in 1923, leaving an estate of 212 pounds, 20 shillings, and 11 pence to Edith May Pearce, spinster, daughter of Lemuel Callaway Pearce. 1891 Census:

2 Snowdon Road, Chard, Somerset:

Priscilla E Pearce Head 61 Principal of school Born Gloucestershire, Bristol
Emma Pearce Cousin 58 Principal of school Born Gloucestershire, Bristol
Margaret Pearce Sister 42 Teacher Born Gloucestershire, Bristol
Clarice Pearce Sister 40 Principal of school Born Gloucestershire, Bristol
Miriam Clarke 28 Governess Yorshire, Goole

and another governess, servants, scholars, total 12 people.