General Robert Irwin (8/26/1738 - ?) was one of the original signers of the Meckenburg Declaration of Independence. The Irvines, later Irwins, came from Ireland to Pennsylvania about 1730. Robert's father died in Pennsylvania in 1763, so he sold his land gained from his inheritance to a brother and moved to Mecklenburg County, North Carolina.

Settling in the southwestern part of the county known as Steele Creek, he married twice, both believed to be daughters of other Mecklenburg signers. He served on the Mecklenburg Safety Committee and was the Mecklenburg delegate to the congress at Halifax in April 1776, and the New Bern congress in November 1776, where the state government was formed and the Council of War organized. He was appointed a colonel and had a victory at Hanging Rock in South Carolina. He was later promoted to general and lived almost twenty-five years after the war ended.

Although he did not have a formal education, he and his family married into some of the most honorable of families in Steele Creek. He was an elder in the Steele Creek Presbyterian Church for 20 years.

Documentation

(1) King, Victor C. Lives and Times of the 27 Signers of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence of May 20, 1775. Charlotte, NC, 1956.