My Genealogy Hound

JACOB S. ZEARING. The name Zearing has appeared frequently upon the records of Cumberland county for a hundred years past. Henry Zearing was a citizen of East Pennsboro as early as 1808 and continued to reside in that and the adjoining township down to the time of his death. He had a brother named Lewis who long resided in the vicinity of Mechanicsburg, and who was a private in Capt. George Hendel’s company in the War of 1812. Lewis Zearing was prominent in business and public affairs and long held the office of justice of the peace. Afterward Henry Zearing in Allen township, and Martin Zearing in East Pennsboro, also were justices, and the title “Squire Zearing” for many years was a familiar sound throughout the county.

The Henry Zearing of a hundred years ago had a family of six children, three sons and three daughters. The sons were Jacob, Henry and John; and the daughters were Mrs. Monosmith, Mrs. Templin, and Margaret, the last named dying unmarried. The son Jacob by occupation was a cooper and a mason and always lived in the vicinity of Shiremanstown. He married Eliza Swiler, daughter of John and Catherine (Kreitzer) Swiler, and a granddaughter of Christian Swiler and Susan, his wife, who in 1792 came from Lancaster county and settled on the north side of the Conedoguinet creek in what is now Silver Spring township. The Kreitzers were also along the early settlers of the lower end of the county, but lived to the south of the Conedoguinet. Eliza Swiler’s parents died while she was yet a young girl and she for years had her home with her Kreitzer relatives. Jacob Zearing died Dec. 31, 1883; he and his wife are buried in the cemetery of St. John’s Church near Shiremanstown. Jacob and Eliza (Swiler) Zearing were the parents of the subject of this sketch, Jacob Swiler Zearing. They also had one other child, Henry Monosmith Zearing, now living at Shiremanstown.

Jacob S. Zearing was born at Shiremanstown, Jan. 18, 1843. He was educated in the public schools of that place and in Denlinger’s Academy, at Camp Hill, where he spent two or three terms. On leaving the academy he clerked for a short time for Rudy White, who kept a small general store at Camp Hill. He next secured a position as clerk in a general store in Shiremanstown, which he filled for two and a half years. With this preliminary training as a salesman he entered the drug store of Dr. G. W. Reily, located at No. 10 Market Square, Harrisburg, where he remained continuously for fifteen years. While engaged in the drug store he read medicine with Dr. Reily; and, although he never entered upon the practice of the profession, along his friends and acquaintances he has ever since been familiarly known as “Doctor Zearing.” After leaving Harrisburg he engaged for a period of three years in the drug business with Dr. M B. Musser, in Mechanicsburg. On Jan. 16, 1873, while in business in Mechanicsburg, Jacob S. Zearing was married to Kate Hannah Witmer, of Middlesex township, who was a daughter of Jacob and Hannah (Senseman) Witmer, and a descendant of two well known representative families of Cumberland county. After his marriage he quit the drug business and began farming in Middlesex township and has so continued ever since. Along with his farming he has always taken an active interest in political affairs. He is a Republican, but liberal and progressive in all matters, and has always stood well with conservative citizens generally. Politically, the district in which he lives is strongly Democratic, yet notwithstanding his Republican affiliations he has been elected school director for twenty-one years and was never defeated for the office. In county affairs he enjoys a like successful prestige. In 1882 he was elected county auditor; in 1884 county commissioner: and in 1887 was re-elected as county commissioner. In the performance of his public duties he has always acted conscientiously and without political bias or that fear of responsibility which governs the actions of many of our public servants. In the fall of 1903, in a hard-fought and close contest, he was elected director of the poor, which office he is now filling.

Jacob S. and Kate H. (Witmer) Zearing had children as follows: Robert Witmer, born at Mechanicsburg, Jan. 4. 1874; Kathrine Hannah, born in Middlesex township, Dec. 29, 1878; and Nellie, born July 30, 1877, who died Aug. 19, 1878. Robert W. Zearing, the son, married Sallie Keyser, of Middlesex, who died a short time after their marriage. Kathrine H. Zearing, the daughter, married Frank E. Brenneman, of Middlesex, and they live at Terra Alta, Preston Co., W. Va., where Mr. Brenneman is engaged in the mercantile business as a traveling salesman. They have two children, Marilyn and Pauline.

Mr. Zearing’s pleasant home is situated upon a rise near Middlesex Station, on the Cumberland Valley railroad, four miles east of Carlisle. Evergreen and other trees surround and shelter the house and so mark the place that it can easily be seen and recognized from a distance. Here he has lived since in 1875 and here he expects to spend his remaining days.