California Biographies
Mendocino and Lake Counties, California
 
Transcribed by Peggy Hooper

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives 
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

Source:
History of Mendocino and Lake Counties, California
With Biographical Sketches
History by Aurelius O. Carpenter And Percy H. Millberry
Illustrated, Complete In One Volume
Historic Record Company, Los Angeles, California, 1914


HETTIE IRWIN. � Chicago has its Ella Flagg Young and the entire 
country has watched with interest her progressive reforms in the educational 
work of that great city. Lake county has its Miss Hettie Irwin, and in a local 
way her work, too, has aroused deep interest. Women of this type inspire 
confidence in the perpetuity and the improvement of the public school system 
and in the value of its achievements through the preparation of the youth of 
the land for positions of confidence and responsibility. Not only is Miss Irwin 
a woman of exceptional judgment and broad information concerning peda- 
gogy, but she possesses in addition the important faculty of inspiring the 
children of the county with an aspiration to ascend to intellectual attainment. 
Moreover, she is pronouncedly popular, as was evidenced in her election 
against a Democratic majority of about three hundred and against opponents 
who were candidates of recognized strength and quality. 

It is a source of some pride to Miss Irwin that she is a member of a 
family that has given to the country professional men of note, who have risen 
by very appreciable merits and who in different parts of the country have 
added prestige to the family name by their own alert mentality and indepen- 
dent views. In the opinion of friends, the life of Miss Irwin herself adds 
luster to the intellectual achievements of others of the name. Descended 
from Virginian forebears and from John Irwin, the original immigrant, a man 
of some prominence in his chosen locality and in the period just prior to the 
Revolution, Miss Irwin is a daughter of Isaac Denman and Sarah (Laughlin) 
Irwin. The former, born in Putnam county, Ind., near Greencastle, whither 
his parents had removed from Kentucky, became a pioneer of Nebraska, 
where he remained, with the exception of a brief sojourn in Missouri, until 
he brought his family to California and settled in Lake county. At the age 
of sixty-nine (1914) he is now practically retired. His brother. Benjamin H. 
Irwin, of Tecumseh, Neb., was a lawyer of state-wide prominence during the 
prime of his professional enterprises. A cousin, Rowen Irwin, is now district 
attorney of Kern county, while another cousin, John L. P. Irwin, is district 
attorney of Kings county. Others have gained success at the bar, while there 
have not been wanting some of the name to rise to local distinction in the 
ministry and in educational circles. 

When the family left Nebraska for California. Miss Hettie Irwin was a 
small child. Her only sister, Viola, now a teacher in Scotts valley, is the 
wife of Arthur J. Gunn, owner of a sawmill near Kelseyville. One of her 
brothers, George P., is clerking in a general mercantile store at Kelseyville. 
while the other, Charles Jasper, is a Methodist Episcopal minister, now 
pastor of a congregation at New Harbor, Me. All of the four were born in 
Nebraska with the exception of Mrs. Gunn, who is a native of Missouri. After 
having had the advantages of the grammar schools and Clear Lake Academy 
at Kelseyville, Miss Hettie Irwin began to teach school at the age of eighteen. 
From the first she displayed rare adaptability for the work. The children 
under her charge made excellent records in their studies. The standard of 
scholarship was advanced. Modern methods were introduced. A close and 
appreciative student of pedagogy, she endeavored to utilize in her classes 
the best counsel of the wisest educators. After thirteen years as a teacher in 
the Lake county schools she was elected county superintendent on the Re- 
publican ticket in the fall of 1906, and four years later was chosen her own 
successor, a fact that gives silent but eloquent tribute to the character of her 
work. In the county there are fifty-one licensed teachers now engaged in 
teaching, while the thirty-nine grammar schools and two high schools come 
directly under the scope of her authority, their work and progress forming 
a portion of her responsibility, while at the same time their success is the 
highest aspiration of her official record. She is identified with the Presby- 
terian Church of Kelseyville. Holding extraneous matters subordinate to 
the exacting demands of her office as county superintendent, she has devoted 
her time and talents to the important task in hand, and has asked no higher 
reward than the conscientiousness of work well done in the promotion of 
the educational interests of the county.