Agnes Irwin

Agnes Irwin (December 30, 1841 – December 5, 1914) was an American educator, best known as the first dean of Radcliffe College (1894–1909). Prior to that, she served as the principal of the West Penn Square Seminary for Young Ladies in Philadelphia (later renamed as the Agnes Irwin School). Formative years Born in Washington, D.C., on December 30, 1841, Agnes Irwin was a daughter of United States Congressman William Wallace Irwin (1803–1856) and Sophia Arabella (Bache) Irwin (1815–1904), a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who was a daughter of Richard Bache, Jr. of the Republic of Texas Navy and Second Texas Legislature (1847), and Sophia Burrell Dallas, daughter of Arabella Maria Smith and Alexander J. Dallas, an American statesman who served as the U.S. Treasury Secretary under President James Madison. Agnes Irwin was also a great-granddaughter of Sarah Franklin Bache and Richard Bache, and the great-great-granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin, as well as a grandniece of George Mifflin Dallas, the 11th Vice President of the United States, serving under James K. Polk. During her formative years, Agnes Irwin was raised in Copenhagen, Denmark, where her father was serving as Minister Resident to Denmark. Following the completion of his service to the United States in that role, she returned with her family to Washington, D.C., where she subsequently became a witness to the impact that the American Civil War had on the nation's capital during its first year (1861). After relocating to what she and her parents hoped would be a safer area for her in New York in 1862, she arrived around the same time as the New York City draft riots were beginning.