The Huldah Coffer House (Historical Marker)

Here follows the inscription written on this roadside historical marker:

The Huldah Coffer House
Built ca. 1876 for Huldah Coffer, this house was constructed on farmland that had been in the locally prominent Coffer family since the 18th century. Widowed at age 22, Coffer became a farmer, growing wheat, oats, and Indian corn and raising a modest number of sheep and milk cows on her 261 acre farm. She shared her home with her daughter, Ella, and son-in-law, M.D. Hall, a lawyer and educator who was Superintendent of Fairfax County Schools from 1886 to 1929. Hall oversaw the transition from district school boards to the consolidated School Board of Fairfax County in 1922.

Erected 2014 by The Fairfax County History Commission.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This farm was named Locust Hill by the family.


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Here follows a history of the M.D. Hall as published on the Fairfax County Public Schools website:

In 1881, M. D. Hall married Ella Coffer, and the couple took up residence in the Coffer family home near Burke. Their daughter, Nancy, shared some recollections about her father in an interview.

Nancy Hall: He traveled by horse and buggy around the county. He visited every school in the county at least twice. He’d visit those schools and he gave these tests – oral tests in arithmetic and spelling. And all the teachers knew him quite well and they called him the “teacher’s friend.” He hired the teachers. He conducted the teachers’ examinations. And if they did not have the proper money, enough money to pay the teachers of the county, he borrowed the money on his own – yes, on his own! He just borrowed the money with the mortgage on different properties that my mother had.

Host: In 1929, M. D. Hall retired after 43 years of service as Superintendent of Schools. After his death ten years later, Nancy Hall donated some of her father’s personal effects to the Fairfax County School Board. Two of the items, this silver loving cup and silver dish, had been given to Superintendent Hall by teachers in 1925 and 1929, respectively. M. D. Hall was succeeded by the sixth, and second-longest serving superintendent of FCPS, Wilbert Tucker Woodson.