Irvine, William (1741–1804), general in the American army, was born 3 November 1741 in Co. Fermanagh. His parents' names are unknown, though it is possible that his father was James Irvine, a doctor in Enniskillen. Others give the name as John; it seems likely that the family was related to the gentry family of Irvines of Castle Irvine. His mother may have been Ann Armstrong (‘Armstrong’ appears in the names of two of his own children). There were at least three (possibly six) sons and two daughters in the family. Irvine attended school in Enniskillen and is said to have studied at TCD, though his name does not appear in the list of graduates. After a short time as a cornet of dragoons, he studied medicine (it is said, with the noted teacher George Cleghorn (qv)) and then went into the navy as a ship's surgeon. He saw service in the Seven Years War, but resigned and with two of his brothers settled (1764) in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he set up a medical practice.
Like most emigrants from Ulster, Irvine supported efforts to achieve American independence in the years after 1770, and in 1774 attended the provincial congress of Pennsylvania. In 1776 he was commissioned colonel in a Pennsylvania regiment, and (after recruiting soldiers and equipping the regiment himself) joined the American attack on Canada; the Americans were defeated at Trois Rivières, and he was captured. He was well treated, and was paroled 3 August 1776; he was not free to reengage in the war till he was formally exchanged (6 May 1778). He was made a brigadier-general in the continental army (1779), and took part in unsuccessful attacks around New York (1780). As commander of Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh) from 1781, he was charged with defence of the north-western frontier, and restored discipline after mutinies in the Pennsylvanian regiments. The fort was under-manned, and Irvine authorised volunteer sorties into the Native American-controlled upper Ohio valley; as a result, innocent Moravian people were massacred (1782), and in reprisals American forces were defeated and tortured. Irvine resigned his command in November 1783 when the war was over. He received a land grant, spent the rest of his life in public affairs in Pennsylvania, and was a member of the confederation congress in 1786–8. He recommended in 1785 the purchase of land to allow that state access to Lake Erie, and served on commissions to establish boundaries and to lay out several towns, including Erie, Pennsylvania. He was a delegate (1790) to the convention that established a new constitution for Pennsylvania, and during 1793–5 he served in the third US congress.
Irvine was sent as a commissioner to try to defuse the controversy in western Pennsylvania, where the mainly Scotch-Irish settlers resented what they saw as government interference; the imposition of taxes on their whiskey distilling was particularly unpopular. Though he expressed sympathy for their difficult circumstances in a letter to President Washington, he accepted command as major-general of the state militia when the discontent in the back country became the ‘whiskey rebellion’ of 1794. He was one of the founding members of the elite Society of the Cincinnati, and was its president from 1801. His influence on Pennsylvanian politics continued till his death in Philadelphia of cholera, 29 July 1804. He married (perhaps in 1772) Anne Callender in Carlisle, Pa. They had five sons and six daughters; three sons had military careers.