Ive years ago the matter of my ancestry was brought prominently to my attention by the questions of my eldest son, Hallock Campbell Sherrard, then ten years of age, who wished to know something about all of his ancestors as far back as possible. He had already searched out his lineage on his mother's side through the Campbells, and Olivers, and Lyons, and Hallocks, and Griffiths, and Allens, and it now remained for him to investigate his descent on his father's side of the house. In order to satisfactorily answer these inquiries, I began to search my father's ms. Volumes, and I became so much interested in them that I determined to select out such portions as would give a complete history of the Sherrard Family of Steubenville, of which my father, Robert Andrew Sherrard, was the founder and head. At the time of his death, January I, 1874, he had accumulated no fewer than ten thousand pages of written material, which covered a great variety of subjects, including Family History and Personal Recollections. This had been the work of his leisure moments for fifty years before his death. At first my only purpose was to collect and copy from all these sources such items as would make a continuous and complete history of the family. The work of writing I began about two years ago, copying carefully on the type-writer, intending to have the whole beautifully bound for the use of my own children. However, I had not written more than fifty pages, when my brothers and Sisters, seeing my specimen pages, became so much interested in my work that they regretted that my method would result in only a single copy of the book.