Copyright Cheri Mello. All rights reserved.

Zerilda was born in Paxton, Ford Co, IL to John Alexander Smith and Elizabeth Gregg. She married in 1885 to Elihu "Merritt" Blackburn. Zerilda bore 9 children, 7 of which lived to adulthood. She died in Los Angeles at the age of 63 of general debility.

The following lines were read at the February meeting of the John H. Reagan Chapter, United Daughters of the Confederacy, No. 1002, at Los Angeles, California.
It was voted to place them in the Chapter scrap book as well as on the minutes of the Chapter and that a copy be sent to the family. All in loving tribute to our deceased member, Zerilda Blackburn.
Twenty-two years ago, when we came to Los Angeles and purchased a home in a new section of the city, a family bought a home next to ours. This family consisted of father, mother and seven children; two other children having died in infancy.
From that day until a few short weeks ago, the mother in that home has been an inspiration to me and I want to pay her tribute in these few words. Life had not been easy in her young days, on the Missouri farm but it taught her to face the battles of life with her chin up and her faith in God unswerving.
It was a happy contented family and they were good neighbors to me. We mothers talked over our problems together and were congenial because we had the same goal in view, raising our children in the Sunday School and Church, giving them a good education, developing fine men and women for the future.
When her husband died she "carried on" and kept her family together; a heavy load, and yet she was never too busy to answer a call for service, either by the church or others, to the needy, the sick and the soul-sick ones. The neighbors knew where to run to get help in times of distress whether of mind or body.
Years passed, busy years, little time for a gay social life with that growing family; a family who loved and appreciated her. A family successfully raised and educated through her marvelous executive ability, one a lawyer, another an architect*, another a contractor; the girls married to business men and all established in their own homes. One by one they left her until only one boy remained and when this one entered the ministry, married a girl who helped him in his christian work and was beloved by her mother-in-law, it seemed as if indeed this mother had finished her work.
For ten years a very successful president of the Ladies Aid Society of the Normandie Avenue Methodist Church, an active member of the W. C. T. U., president of the Senior Bible Class of the Sunday School and the duties of many other church offices filled her days.
When her family persuaded her to lay aside some of her burdens, she felt as if she had indeed closed her life work; finished what she had set out to do, be a true "Mother," a shining christian and a true friend to humanity. It was hard to sit with folded hands, so she tried to keep active and fight off the disease which finally claimed her.
Author unknown.
* Not an architect, he was a cartographer.
W.T.C.U. = Woman's Christian Temperance Union