William Irwin

William Irwin was my wife's great great grandfather. He died on February 28, 1865 in Ellis County, Texas.

His grave marker in the Waxahachie City Cemetery gives his age as 85 years 7 months, so from it you can figure he was born in July of 1779.

William Irwin's granddaughter Louisa married Allan Bethel Hall in 1864 in Smith County Tennessee and her daughter Lassie married Eli Lewis Lawrence twenty years later.

William Irwin was born in Virginia but moved to White County Tennessee by 1812. He is shown on a militia list for Captain Townsend's Company that year and was in White County up until after the 1840 census.


By then his wife had died in Tennessee and he moved to Texas with his younger daughter Vetura and her husband Jonathan Erwin Prince. Vetura's family moved from Tennessee to Arkansas in 1847 and then to Dallas County Texas the next year. They eventually settled on a farm outside Waxahachie, Texas south of Dallas.

He is listed on the 1850 census with Vetura's family in Ellis County Texas. By 1860 he was 81 years old apparently living on his own. The James Petty Apperson family was shown in the household on the census but that may be a recording error and they may have been next door. William Irwin was listed as the owner of land valued at $3.500 and personal property at $3,500 on that census so he had his own place. He died five years later and was buried in the Waxahachie Cemetery.

This photo of him late in life was sent to me by another one of his granddaughters who lives in Texas.