The Zaring Family

Flourishing in the Forest: The Zaring Family at Cascade Springs

Introduction: The Irony of the Sherman Connection

History is often written in irony. In 1864, General William T. Sherman’s troops fought a bitter engagement across a wooded tract in Southwest Atlanta during the Battle of Utoy Creek. Decades later, John H. Zaring Sr. moved to that exact land, bought the battlefield, and spent a half-century protecting its natural beauty. The irony cuts deeper: Zaring’s first wife, Ruth Elizabeth Sherman, was the General’s own niece. The Zaring story is a narrative of restless ambition, profound personal grief, and a stubborn belief in the healing power of the land.¹

Chapter 1: Kentucky Discipline and Florida Tragedy

Born in rural Kentucky in 1867 to a Civil War veteran, Zaring learned discipline early. In the 1880s, he moved to Eminence, Kentucky, where he studied bookkeeping at a small business college. It was a practical skill that grounded his future ventures.²

His career began in the classroom. He moved south to teach in Douglas, Georgia, where he first saw crowds flocking to Gaskin Spring for its medicinal water. The image stuck.³ He soon pushed further south to Jacksonville, Florida, taking a bookkeeping job at Glen St. Mary’s Nursery. Here, he learned the mechanics of commercial horticulture.

His ambition, however, quickly outgrew plants. He co-founded the Weston-Zaring Lumber Company, scaling the business to include a fleet of ocean-going schooners built to export timber.⁴ In 1890, he married Ruth Elizabeth Sherman. Their Florida years brought significant wealth, but the money was eclipsed by devastating loss. Ruth suffered multiple miscarriages, lost two infant sons, and died shortly after the turn of the century. Zaring was left with a single surviving daughter, born in 1894.⁵

Chapter 2: Tuberculosis and the Atlanta Cure

By 1909, Zaring’s own health was failing. Doctors in Jacksonville diagnosed him with tuberculosis and prescribed a move to a higher altitude and a cooler climate. Facing his own mortality, Zaring sold his lumber interests. He left his teenage daughter in the care of his brother, a wealthy wholesale grocer in Jacksonville, and moved to Atlanta.⁶

Arriving with substantial capital, he looked for land. On October 5, 1909, he bought the Cascade Springs property at a sheriff’s auction for $5,100. The purchase was a business investment, but it was primarily a personal cure. Zaring believed the property’s free-flowing spring water could arrest his disease. He drank nothing else for the rest of his life. He lived to be 90.⁷

Chapter 3: The Restless Entrepreneur

Zaring built a sprawling estate at Cascade Springs. He erected six massive commercial greenhouses, heating them for year-round flower production with a private boiler plant. When the city power monopoly refused to run electrical lines to his rural property, Zaring simply organized his neighbors, bought poles, and built his own utility grid, founding the Cascade Mutual Utilities Corporation in 1920 to ensure his operations remained self-sufficient.⁸

Yet, he rarely stayed put. His mind was restless. In 1915, he traveled to San Diego for the Panama-California Exposition. He ran a commercial exhibit called “Neptune’s Wonderland” and rented wicker-covered electric motor carts to tourists navigating the fairgrounds.⁹ While out West, he chased mineral wealth. Having taken a correspondence course in metal mining fifteen years earlier, he headed to Arizona, purchased mining claims, and briefly dug for gold himself.¹⁰

Back in Atlanta, he incorporated the Cascade Spring Company in 1924. The corporate charter captured his wandering intellect. It legally empowered him to bottle water, run pleasure resorts, manage nurseries, and even experiment with a proprietary recipe for ginger ale.¹¹

Chapter 4: A Second Family and Final Years

In 1920, Zaring married his second wife, Dahlia Cason. They had a son, John Jr., in 1922.¹² Life at the estate was not always tranquil. In March 1921, Dahlia filed for divorce, alleging cruelty. The trial ended in a hung jury. By December, she withdrew the suit, and the family stayed intact.¹³

As he aged, Zaring anchored himself firmly to the local community. He joined the staff of the Cascade School around 1927. Decades later, at a 1952 school reunion, photographers captured the 85-year-old Zaring squeezing into a third-grade desk beside his grown son, a quiet testament to a lifetime spent in the neighborhood.¹⁴

In 1953, he handed the greenhouse business over to John Jr. John H. Zaring Sr. died in November 1957.¹⁵ He left behind a complex legacy: a grieving husband who built a lumber empire, a tuberculosis patient who outlived his doctors, and a restless entrepreneur who finally found his anchor in the forests of Southwest Atlanta.

Bibliography

• The Atlanta Constitution. “APPEAL FROM DIVORCE DECREE IS DISMISSED.” December 18, 1921.
• The Atlanta Journal. “Cascade Reunion Set.” November 10, 1952.
• The Atlanta Journal. “J. H. Zaring Sr. Obituary.” November 30, 1957.
• The Atlanta Journal. “Mrs. J. H. Zaring Obituary.” May 7, 1969.
• Zaring, Russell A. “Cascade Springs: An Atlanta Urban Spa.” Atlanta History, Fall 1987.
• Zaring, Wilson Miles and Charles Thomas Zaring. The Zarings of Kentucky. Privately published, 1983.

1. Russell A. Zaring, “Cascade Springs: An Atlanta Urban Spa,” Atlanta History, Fall 1987, 45.
2. Russell A. Zaring, “Cascade Springs: An Atlanta Urban Spa,” Atlanta History, Fall 1987, 45.
3. Russell A. Zaring, “Cascade Springs: An Atlanta Urban Spa,” Atlanta History, Fall 1987, 45.
4. Russell A. Zaring, “Cascade Springs: An Atlanta Urban Spa,” Atlanta History, Fall 1987, 45.
5. Russell A. Zaring, “Cascade Springs: An Atlanta Urban Spa,” Atlanta History, Fall 1987, 45.
6. Russell A. Zaring, “Cascade Springs: An Atlanta Urban Spa,” Atlanta History, Fall 1987, 45.
7. Russell A. Zaring, “Cascade Springs: An Atlanta Urban Spa,” Atlanta History, Fall 1987, 45.
8. Russell A. Zaring, “Cascade Springs: An Atlanta Urban Spa,” Atlanta History, Fall 1987, 53.
9. Russell A. Zaring, “Cascade Springs: An Atlanta Urban Spa,” Atlanta History, Fall 1987, 45.
10. Russell A. Zaring, “Cascade Springs: An Atlanta Urban Spa,” Atlanta History, Fall 1987, 45.
11. Russell A. Zaring, “Cascade Springs: An Atlanta Urban Spa,” Atlanta History, Fall 1987, 54.
12. “Mrs. J. H. Zaring Obituary,” The Atlanta Journal, May 7, 1969.
13. “APPEAL FROM DIVORCE DECREE IS DISMISSED,” The Atlanta Constitution, December 18, 1921.
14. “Cascade Reunion Set,” The Atlanta Journal, November 10, 1952.
15. “J. H. Zaring Sr. Obituary,” The Atlanta Journal, November 30, 1957.