HON. JOHN P. IRISH Mr. Irish is an editor of wonderful ability, a politician with few superiors and a citizen worthy of all the warm friends that he can count by the thousands. His political life is a history of itself. He became editor of the Iowa City State Press in December, 1864, and continued owner and editor of the same until Sept. 6, 1882. A democrat in politics, always true to his party in season and out. He has held several offices of honor, profit and trust; was a member of the Iowa House of Representatives and was one of its efficient workers. If he had been a republican he would have occupied a prominent place in the history of the nation. He has the ability, the tact and energy to work himself to  national fame. His many friends here in Johnson county  picture for him a brilliant future and a loft position in the history of the nation.

He was married Nov. 3, 1875, to Miss Anna Fletcher. They have two bright little children. In 1882 he moved to California, and the evening before his departure the citizens of Iowa City gave him a public reception at the St. James Hotel, where he was presented with a fine gold watch and chain and his wife with a fine clock, as a testimonial of the esteem in which he was held by his many warm friends in Iowa City, both democratic and republican joining in making these presents.

(Source: History of Johnson County 1832 - 1889, pgs 851-2)

A Life Position 

The San Francisco Call of a recent date contains the following which will be of interest to the readers of THE PRESS:

"President McKinley has made known to a personal friend his intention of promoting Colonel John P. Irish, naval officer in the custom house of this city, to the more distinguished and responsible position of a member of the board of general appraisers, whose headquarters are in New York City. The new position with which Col. Irish will be honored is under civil service and is for life, the salary ($7000 per annum) being equal to the responsibility. Under the regulations of the service the vacancy which will be created on the 1st of October of this year, by the resignation of appraiser Shurtleff, of Oregon, must be filled by a democrat, the board being now partisan. Mr. Shurtleff has been sick for some time and being no longer able to keep up with his work has handed to President McKinley his resignation to take effect on the first of the month. Mr. Irish's place as naval officer will be filled by the appointment of Col. Wm. B. Hamilton, cashier of the custom house.

Colonel Irish would not talk on the matter, beyond saying that he did not know anything about the report that he was to be appointed. The report from Washington that Col. Irish was to be promoted is corroborated by the fact that President McKinley is grateful to him for not supporting Bryan at the Presidential election, and as he has an opportunity to select a democrat for the important position of general appraiser, he knew of no democrat that he liked better than the colonel. The board of general appraisers consists of nine members, each of whom placed in charge of one of the nine districts into which the United States is divided for the purposes of the board. Colonel Irish will have charge of the Pacific coast division, with the affairs of which he is well acquainted. He will continue his residence in this state, and will handle all cases of disputed appraisement that may arise on this side of the continent."

(Source: Iowa City Press-Citizen, 6 Oct 1899, Fri., pg. 4)

John P. Irish - A True American

Colonel John P. Irish, editor, attorney, educator, farmer, law-maker, humanitarian, and official, is dead, and his old home city and state mourn.  The good accomplished through righteous and militant citizenship becomes a monument to the man, whose intellect, heart, and soul are devoted through many years to the service of his community, common-wealth and republic.

To him who so lives, a grateful people erect other monuments, but none is more stately, more beautiful, or more enduring than the crystallized love and esteem of those who prove forever the biblical tenet that "a good name at home is a tower of strength abroad."

Such an one was John Powell Irish, born and reared in Iowa City, and for two score years a resident of this community - now laid to rest, the victim of a dire tragedy near the Golden Gate. During eighteen years of the period in which he resided here, Mr. Irish was the able and brilliant editor of the State Press, the precursor of the present Press-Citizen.  On the journalistic tablets of the state, he left an imprint never to be effaced.

A writer of exceptional power, he wielded a pen that was dipped in caustic, gall, or wormwood, when severe treatment of public ills was necessary, and was tipped in the gleams of gold from an Iowa sun, when he felt the theme called for kindlier, felicitous phrase.

That pen was ever active in the service of good - even unto the last day of his four score years of life - and was ever productive of the results desired.  He wrote trenchantly, convincingly, powerfully, whether his words were polemic or merely commentary. Mordant, emotional, coldly logical, or witty, they were always to the point, and he wrote as he spoke, with vigor, vitality, and virility.  As a force in the community, Mr. Irish was almost incomparable in those days of old in Iowa City.  Within his big breast beat a heart in accord with his Herculean physique. Hence altruism and love of his fellows were basic phases of his life's activities, not only in his own land, but overseas.

As a founder and promoter and officer of orphans' homes, homes for the blind and other eleemosynary institutions, he proved himself a man of broadest humanity.  Abou Ben Adhem modestly besought the "angel within his room" to write him down as "one who loves his fellow men" - not one who craved ambitiously to be described as great - and the angel placed his name so high, it "led all the rest."

John P. Irish labored for humanity and for the civic good of Iowa City nearly 18 years and for these principles, in a broad way, for sixty years. Whether he wielded the editorial scalpel, taught in the public schools, governed those schools, or served on the board of regents of Iowa university, or aided, in the legislature, to secure sinews of war for that institution, or to create, develop, and strengthen new departments and colleges therein, his every thought was "my city and my state first-myself, last."

His accomplishments in the capitol at Des Moines were remarkable achievements. A democrat, unswerving, among an overwhelming host of republicans, his influence was extraordinary and when he invoked it in the interests of Iowa university, he swayed men of opposing persuasion, as if they were his closest political fellows. Thus he gained for the university the fundamentals that laid the foundation for the "billion dollar educational plant" of which all Iowa and then thousand alumni are proud today.

A political leader in his own party, he was unswayed by the fact that no hope for great personal preferment lay in the adherence to democratic principles and platforms in a state hopelessly lost to that party, and to Jeffersonian ism he gave all that was good and strong and potent in him. Nor was he subservient to the so-called "call of party." when his conscience bade him deny some of the temporary tenets of the democracy of after years - the "free silver" doctrine being absolutely powerless to win his endorsement.

Mr. Irish, however, might have espoused the republican cause and gone far, the governor's chair, to which his democratic brethren forty years ago would have liked to call him, being but a stepping stone to higher places. As a loyal, steadfast, and unyielding democrat, he followed his course, uncompromising, unchanging, Gibraltar like, when once he decided he was right. "Thrice armed is he who has his quarrel just," he believed and so believing, he would not bow down and worship what, to him, were false gods, even in his own party. "I would rather be right than be president." said Clay, and, in so far as lesser honors of political life were at issue, so John P. Irish took his stand.

Despite this unfaltering adherence to his convention and ideals - probably because of it, in fact - so great an American as Theodore Roosevelt admired and praised him, stood by and defended him. As naval officer of the port of San Francisco, Mr. Irish was appointed by President Grover Cleveland, and retained his post in later years, when other administrations were in power. To Theodore Roosevelt came political brothers, urging that a democrat be removed from office, that John P. Irish be politically beheaded, because, and purely because, he was a democrat. Whereupon spoke Roosevelt, after the fashion of Lincoln as to Grant; "If democracy  makes an official like John P. Irish, give me more democrats."

Thus the great brain; the warm heart; the steadfast principles; the brilliant gifts; and the splendid state and national service of john P. Irish won him a high place in the affections and esteem of one of America's greatest sons, even as they were thus rewarded in the hearts and minds of lesser men.

John P. Irish sleeps, but the  memory of the grand, old Iowan shall live forever. The world is a better place for his having lived in it - and of no man can a nobler epitaph be written. (Source: Iowa City Press-Citizen, 10 Oct 1923, Wed., pg. 6)

(Source:  The Placer Herald, 20 Oct 1923, pg. 1)