Back To Generational Patterns In Irwin Ancestry

I remember my father, Pat Irwin, always saying that his father, Joe Irwin, was a mechanical genius and could design or repair absolutely anything.  Joe intuitively understood the mechanics of things and Pat must have inherited that gene because he was much the same.

Above is a photo of Rendville, Ohio after the coal boom had gone bust. Not exactly a community bursting with the promise of economic advancement.  So, while my grandfather Joseph had the know-how to invent, restore and re-purpose devices of all description, he really did not get much Career Opportunity to do so.

The very contraptions used for intensive deep mining fell into disrepair since everything below ground was drilled out by the late 1920's. So, when a railroad job became available upon return from WWI Argonne Forest duty, he stayed with that job until he died on that job in the 1940's.
But of course, a down-on-its-luck coal camp is also exactly the circumstance that would make Joe Irwin the most popular fellow in town.  Just about any man or woman who knew how to patch, plaster or piece life back together was a sought after citizen.  Can you help me rebuild the engine on this 4 cylinder Henderson motorcycle?  If you could answer in the affirmative, you must have been worth your weight in gold.

I always wondered where the historical mechanical intelligence originated. How was it passed down and where did these Irwins get the opportunity to absorb such problem-solving in application?
Well, along came the Genealogy with this explanation.  Please Read Below!

James Irwin, born Glencoe County Antrim in 1700, was a Scotch-Irish immigrant who came to Pennsylvania in 1729 with seven other Irwins. Those Irwins operated mills, a bleaching plant and a smith shop in Northern Ireland. 

James Irwin in 1748 owned 540 acres in Peters Twp. just north of present day Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. By 1766 he owned a mill valued at three pounds 12 shillings and by 1769 the value of the mill was 10 pounds six shillings.

During the Revolutionary War, Archibald Irwin's oldest son, also named James, began to do commissary duty for the Western Army at Irwinton's Mills.  James Irwin organized pack horse trains to carry flour, meat and other provisions to Pittsburgh for the Western Army. James Irwin acted as an assistant commissary under the appointment of Col. George Morgan, who was Commissary General for the Western Army, whose headquarters were at Pittsburgh.

Large quantities of flour were made at Irwinton's Mill, packed in kegs, each weighing about one hundred pounds, to be sent west. Flour was brought in from Washington County, Maryland. Large numbers of beef cattle were driven to Irwinton's plantation to be purchased, slaughtered and processed in a recently erected slaughter house, and sent to the Western Armies. 

James Irwin stated that the Pittsburgh Quarter Master Department had four brigades of pack horses each containing about one hundred horses, with one horse master and twelve riders to each brigade, to carry provisions west for the Army. The mill must have been busy and crowded, with one hundred pack horses being loaded, and with their drivers and horse master preparing for a trip over the mountains to Pittsburgh.

The original Irwinton Grist Mill, built around 1760, had over 25 belts running, 10 belt elevators, water turbines, a variety of 15 pieces of equipment, rope hoist, wooden cogs, hydro electric was produced while lots of pulleys and shafts kept turning.  Sounds like a wonderful and complex Rube Goldberg universe to grow up in.

We also get the picture of a very PRACTICAL patriotism.  This family helped launch and liberate a fledgling democracy by putting bread in its belly, blankets on its bed, boots on its feet, meat on its table, shirts on its back and powder in its musket.  They helped make the physiological struggle for Independence a reliable possibility.

And so we begin to comprehend how invention and innovation is a precious Inheritance, manifesting in an abandoned coal camp, where it is devalued by a morally bankrupt industry but fully utilized and appreciated by those left behind, now depending on it for their very survival.  And so it persists, one generation after another and in 2016, perhaps it is one of the gifts that you've discovered inside you and yours.