CONFEDERATE BIOGRAPHY:  JOHN IRELAND - Bexar County, TX

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Submitted by Mary Love Berryman - marylove@tyler.net
7 September 2001
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TEXANS WHO WORE THE GRAY by Sid S. Johnson

JOHN IRELAND.

John Ireland, of Seguin, was born at Millerstown, Hart County, 
Kentucky, January 1, 1827.  His educational op­portunities were limited, 
but being ambitious and self re­liant he made the best of them. After 
studying law in the office of Robert D. Murray and Henry C. Woods at 
Mumfordsville he was in 1852 admitted to the bar, and the fol­lowing 
year came to Texas locating in Seguin which became his life­long place 
of residence. He soon attained success in his profession. He was a 
member of the Constitutional Con­vention in 1861, and when its session 
ended, enlisted as a private soldier in the Confederate Army.  He rose 
rapidly and was successively captain of his company, major of his 
regiment and then Leutenant Colonel, serving through the campaign in 
the trans-Mississippi deparment.  When the war ended he returned to 
Seguin and took up again his law practice.  He was a member of the 
Constitutional Conven­tion of 1866 and the same year was elected 
district judge but was removed in 1867 on the usurpation by military 
power. He was elected to the lower house of the state legislature in 
1873, and to the state senate in 1874.  He was appointed as­sociate 
justice of the Supreme Court in 1875 and made an enviable reputation. 
He was elected Governor of Texas in 1882 and two years later, was 
re-­elected by more than one hundred thousand majority.  He made a 
splendid chief exe­cutive.  Gov. Ireland was twice married: first in 
1854 to Mrs. Maltida (Wicks) Faircloth who died in 1856 leaving one 
child.  His second wife, to whom he was married in 1875, was Anne W.
 Penn who bore him four children.  Gov. Ireland died, after a brief 
illness, at San Antonio, March 5, 1896.