Governor Irwin died on March 1st., 1818, at the age of sixty-eight and was buried at his home at Union Hill, in Washington County.
In 1856 there was an appropriation by the Georgia Legislature to erect a monument to his memory; and in 1860, a Committee consisting of Colonel R. L. Warthen, Captain S. A. H. Jones and Colonel J. W. Rudisill, was appointed to select a site for same. It was decided to erect the monument in Sandersville, Ga., the county site of Washington County; and here it still stands on Court House square—a shaft of pure white marble—a gift from the State to the memory of her noble son who gave his life, love and ability to his beloved Georgia, "Empire State of the South."—Governor Jared Irwin Chapter, D. A. R.
[EDUCATION OF MEN AND WOMEN OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.]
By Mrs. DeB. Randolph Keim.
Regent Berks County, Reading Pa., Chapter and Honorary Vice-President General, D. A. R.
Again you are assembled to do honor to the memory of George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental armies during the war for Independence, this being the one hundred and seventy-ninth anniversary of his birth.
The first steps to the establishment of a school of systematic education of young men was William and Mary College, of Williamsburgh, the capital of Virginia, in 1617, twenty-six years before the foundation of Harvard in Massachusetts. But the character of the former was not granted until 1693, or fifty years after. The first common school established by legislation in America was in Massachusetts, in 1645, but the first town school was opened at Hartford, Conn., before 1642, and I feel proud to say I graduated from this same school over two hundred years later, then known as the Hartford Latin Grammar School and later Hartford Boys' and Girls' High School.
The only established schools of higher learning in America after William and Mary in Virginia and Harvard in Massachusetts for the education of young men later prominent in the Revolution were: St. John's, Annapolis, Md., 1696; Yale, New Haven, Conn., 1701; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1740; Princeton, N. J., 1746; Washington and Lee, Lexington, Va., 1749; Columbia, New York, 1754.