VII

THE IRVINGS: AN AYRSHIRE FAMILY

At the time that my father was growing up in Youngstown, Ohio, his future bride was growing up in the same city. Ultimately she would be valedictorian of her high school class, but Vi did not date Bob until after graduation when she took a job at Ohio Bell. One thing that they did not know, however, was that they shared Scottish roots.

While the Smiths and Jamiesons had very direct connections to Scotland, the Irvings were more distantly related. Viola's mother, who we affectionately called Gammy, was a daughter of a long-time American family whose ties to this continent extend further back than the Revolution of 1776. During the Civil War, Gammy's grandfather, Jacob Ruth, served in the Union Army as a private in the 147th Regiment of the Pennsylvania Volunteers. He lived to attend the reunion of North and South in Gettysburg in 1913. Jacob Ruth's great-great-grandfather, Philip Bossert, arrived in Philadelphia from Alsace, Germany on 30 September 1740, and his son, Melchior Bossard, served as a private in the Pennsylvania militia during the war for independence.

Viola's father, Leslie Edward Irving, was a wagoneer in the American Expeditionary Force in World War I. A victim of poison gas, he lived most of his adult life in poor health. It was his father, John Irving who was the link with Scotland, for he came to the States when he was eight years old. He was born in the Burgh of Maybole in the county of Ayrshire not far from Culzean Castle which lies on the west coast of the country.

In comparison to the Smiths, life in Ayrshire was an altogether different experience than life in urban Glasgow. Ayrshire is a rural county south of Glasgow where rolling hills are divided into fields and gardens by stone fences and hedge rows. John Irving, Viola's grandfather, used to say that the name to search for in Scotland was "Muir" rather than "Irving". Indeed, his grandmother was Janet Muir, daughter of Matthew Muir of the village of Mauchline.

Mauchline takes its name from two Gaelic words, maugh, meaning meadow and linn, a lake. In the first half of the nineteenth century, it was a manufacturing village surrounded by the hills and farms of the Ayrshire countryside. The main products of the villagers were shoes, wooden snuff boxes, and woven fabrics for markets in Glasgow. Matthew Muir was a weaver, and his son-in-law, John Irving was a hawker who sold his wares throughout the district. To this day, Mauchline woodenware, once a favorite of Queen Victoria, is a highly sought collectible.

For Scots, Mauchline is more widely known as home to a famous citizen, Robert Burns. Jean Armour, Burns' wife, was a native of the village, and he took residence at Mossgiel farm for nine years during which time he published the first edition of his works. In such a small town, it would be difficult to imagine that an earlier generation of Muirs and Marshalls would not have had at least a passing acquaintance with the poet. As a matter of fact, the Rev. John Tod who officiated at the wedding of Matthew Muir and Jean Gibson Marshall was married to Willamina Hamilton, a daughter of Gavin Hamilton who was Burns' patron and confederate. Thus, the village that inspired many of Burns' poems, and whose inhabitants found themselves immortalized in the verse of the bard, was also home to the Muirs and to at least one generation of Irvings.

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