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| From a newspaper photo run in 1960 to celebrate 100 years history in the Valley |
It is a life of grandeur, the likes of which would have been a wondrous tale, a lifestyle which I imagine but have only read about in history and novels or seen in glorious movies. That same article continued about the tragedy and the aura of the mansion and Mr. Irwin. Stories vary but Uncle John told me that his grandfather dropped dead in the doorway as he entered the mansion the day before they were to move in, August 18, 1895. JR would never live in the fabulous Glen Irwin whose name he had carefully chosen. At one time he owned all the land that has long since become Clinton Township. What the following article does not reveal are the tales about the widow Irwin, Margaret Truby Burns, aka Maggie, who was Uncle John's grandmother. She was a former washer woman, previously widowed and of great size and girth who snagged the widower John Irwin shocking the likes of all society. He was a wealthy tycoon who increased his fortune hauling iron ore on the Great Lakes and building a railroad in the last decade or so of the 19th century.
By 1942, Maggie's daughter from her first marriage, Susan Burns had fallen, broken a hip and died bequeathing the property to her niece, Mrs Margaret Matthews of Huntsville, Alabama who sold off the estate completely to pay taxes. Glen Irwin was put on the auction block. We are fortunate to have inherited several wonderful antique pieces from the Glen Irwin era and home and if these pieces could talk, they might protest this much less magnificent home where they abide today in Minnesota; on the other hand, I can only fantasize about the servants who kept the fancy curlicues on the furniture gleaming back then; today all that dusting falls to me and I doubt I do as meticulous a job as the paid help did back in the day. Glen Irwin was bought by a lumberman but demolished many years later, reportedly he razed the grand old home and built a much smaller single level home in place, then sold off the land to other builders.
The Irwin's had a town home too built in about 1888 which still survives in Freeport, Pennsylvania but has become the Redmond funeral home. This 1912 photo is from the Valley Dispatch, 1969 Special edition. The Irwin's are reported to have purchased this for $8400 in 1907. When he married Margaret aka Maggie, she insisted on returning from Painesville, Ohio to her old hometown of Freeport to show off her catch of the millionaire JR and to impress the townspeople. It was said that Maggie weighed 400 pounds, huge for the times and certainly beyond portly today, but he doted on her and commissioned a carriage specially built with a double door to accommodate her girth and so that she could enter and exit in a grand manner. Reportedly despite her size she was loved and admired. She had an especial fondness for carriages and owned several including the surrey of President William McKinley, after his assassination Uncle John said that he remembered the carriage with the magnificent gleaming black horses adorned with solid silver bridles and harnesses and how they glistened. After JR's sudden death Maggie withdrew quietly from most activities and developed a phobia and incessantly built one house and another until her death in 1927.
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| The Irwin town home in Freeport |
My Uncle John's father, Edwin B was adopted by Maggie and JR. Edwin married Jessie Ayers, whom I knew as the grand old Mrs Irwin, or Grand Dame. From my visits with her, I learned to sit very properly and drink tea from the finest porcelain cups and saucers, some of which reside in my hutch today. Edwin and Jessie ran a chicken hatchery in Freeport and I really did not enjoy having to visit with her, but as Uncle John would say, "Mother insists we bring you to tea today, Patty." When she insisted there was no way to not comply. She gave me a magnificent old English tea pot along with a sizable check when I graduated from high school; I still have that lovely teapot today. This last photo taken in 2008 is the last home for the Grand Dame, in Buffalo Township, Freeport, Pennsylvania. It has not the same sense of grandeur it had it in it's day, but they ran the hatchery successfully and enjoyed traveling. She survived into widowhood. died in January 1963 when I was away at college and was the only Irwin I knew besides Uncle John. I spent many uncomfortable afternoons there, a young girl and teenager, taking tea with the Grand Mrs. Irwin; she had a fondness for me but because I always had to mind my p's and q's in her presence I dreaded the visits. Mom always alerted me to "be at your best with Mrs Irwin." My aunt always warned me, "don't fidget around her and be still," She was a formal lady, everyone I knew addressed her as Mrs. I remember the inside of the home as dreadfully dreary; I wish I had paid more attention and knew more.
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