CLAREVILLE, TEXAS. Clareville, located off Highway 59 and Farm Road 796 ten miles west of Beeville in southwestern Bee County, was established in 1874 and 1875 by Henry T. Clare and his sons. The community was first called Lomita, then received its present name in the late 1880s. Clare had come from Missouri to Texas in 1840 and later fought in the Mexican War.^qv He married Ella Layton and in 1849 settled in Lavaca County, where he ranched. In 1856 he, his brother, and his five sons moved to the site of Central Community on Aransas Creek. In 1874 and 1875 they purchased and settled a large area of land that became Clareville. After enduring swarms of grasshoppers in 1879, they divided their land and sold to other settlers in the late 1880s. Businesses soon followed—J. H. Bell opened the first store in 1886. In 1898-99 a Clareville school had one teacher and forty-nine pupils. The arrival of the automobile and better roads focused the community's attention upon nearby Beeville, and businesses in Clareville closed. The estimated population of Clareville had fallen to fifty by 1940, and the schools were consolidated into the Skidmore-Tynan school system. In 1989 and again in 2000 the community had a population of twenty-three.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Grace Bauer, Bee County Centennial, 1858-1958 (Bee County Centennial, 1958). Camp Ezell, Historical Story of Bee County, Texas (Beeville: Beeville Publishing, 1973). Mrs. I. C. Madray, A History of Bee County (Beeville, Texas: Bee-Picayune, 1939).

Adrian D. Ramirez