our community. I was born in 1907. I did not have the personal knowledge necessary to select the important families. So I decided to obtain family sketches of as many families as I could. Of course, I left out some families when the evidence seemed to indicate that they did not regard our community as their permanent home com- munity. The idea of unlimited family sketches delayed the completion of the history for many months.
The history is as accurate as I could possibly make it. I checked and re-checked. I would swear under oath that the stories of the first pioneers, the founding of Zearing, the naming of Zearing, and the history of that type is absolutely correct. If there were any doubts about anything I mentioned the doubts in my story.
However, I could not swear under oath that every date in the family section is correct. I was very careful and did my very best to get a completely accurate sketch for every family. Most of the dates were checked from several sources. A great many were taken from obituaries and then checked with the dates on the tombstones. If you don't believe me ask Loren E. Norman how many miles he walked in cemeteries. Loren helped me to obtain cemetery information for the history.
Suppose I list some cases to illustrate how difficult it is to be absolutely certain as to the correctness of family dates.
The tombstone of John E. Craft gave the year of 1933 as the time of his death. His obituary was published in The Tri County News on December 1, 1932. This indicates the date on the tombstone is not correct.
The obituary of Maria Blayney Scott was published in The New Tri County News on November 1, 1951. The tombstone has the date of 1952 as the year of death.
The notice of the death of Mary Luella Sparrow Fines appeared in The New Tri County News on May 12, 1949. The year of 1948 is on her tombstone.
The obituary of Elva Edith Sparrow Hoberland was published in The New Tri County News on March 3, 1949. The year of 1948 is on her tombstone.
The obituary of Edward R. Fry recorded the time of his death as 7 :30 p. m. on June 19, 1923. The tombstone date is June 20, 1923.
The information on the tombstone of Horatio C. and Pauline Mallory Wickham does not agree with the information in this history. The information in this history has been taken from the Wickham family history. This was done at the suggestion of Lulu Wickham Cerka.
Perhaps the examples listed above will point out some of the difficulties encountered in family sketches.
You may wonder why family dates have been included in this history. They have been included to help anyone wanting to write a family history. Dates are very important also in dealing with the government.