Irvin Douglas was born in Texas in 1861 and moved to Arizona in 1887 when he was about 26. In Yuma in 1903 he married Maude 'Daisy' Jacobs who was born in Washington state in 1880. Irvin held several mining claims, and by 1907 he and Maude had moved from Yuma to Sonoita to homestead 160 acres in the Yucca Ash Road area. They had four children: Grace Mary, Volney Marx, Ann Olive, and Irvin Jr.
Irvin's mining job took the family to Searchlight, Nevada in 1918. Tragically, in January 1919, Maude was killed by Queho, a Native American accused of but never convicted for a number of killings, a story told by Senator Harry Reid in his book Searchlight: The Camp that Didn't Fail>.
Irvin and his oldest son, Volney Marx, returned to the Sonoita homestead. By 1935 Irvin's daughter Ann Olive, her husband Emory Stoddard and their seven children, and Grace, her husband Frank Burch and their seven children were all living nearby. Irvin Jr. worked for Mountain States Telephone throughout Arizona. Irvin farmed and ranched on Yucca Ash the rest of his life; he died in 1954, age 93.