Thanks, Alexis! If not for you, I'd not even be participating in Wikitree, let alone these challenges. I'm so glad we are related!!
As for finding those papers: I was quite curious about why the whole rest of that generation of the Irwin family had stayed around the ancestral home in Indiana County, Pa., but MY grandmother was born in Ohio and grew up there. So I went looking for the reason why her parents moved to Ohio.
I did manage to hook up (through a DNA match) with an unknown 4th or 5th cousin, and she told me about a FB page for the extended Irwin family of that line. It was headed by an older cousin, who had traveled to the local county courthouses in Pa to do research with her mom and aunts, back in the 50's and 60's, LONG before the internet existed. She was thrilled that I "found" her, because she said that my great grandfather had been "lost", and that I was the "missing link".
Prior to that, I had found some vague reference on an internet genealogy board, that Bruce (he went by Bruce) may have had another child with a woman named Jenny. So I began to snoop around. I found a notice in an old newspaper that he had been sued for "F&B" (fornication and bastardy) in 1878 by my grandmother! Together, they had a daughter named Emma Jane in 1877. Lo and behold, in 1878 in the next county over, Bruce also had a daughter with a woman named Eugenia Webster (Jenny). That child was named Maud Emmaline Irwin. Maud always went by the last name of Irwin, even tho she was adopted by a Knox family. Bruce was listed as her dad in her obit and her death certificate. Whether she ever saw him or not, I have no idea.
Emma and her mom, Sarah, (my great grandmother), lived with Sarah's parents, until in 1879, Bruce showed up in their doorstep to see the baby, and pulled a revolver on Sarah's mom, because she would not let him in. He was arrested for assault, and needless to say, he was persona non grata in that household from then on. In 1880, he was found living in a boarding house in WV, and working in a sawmill. Sarah was found, at the same time, to be living in a boarding house in the next county over from her parents, and Emma, the baby, remained with Sarah's parents. She was raised there, married there, and lived the rest of her life there, never joining her parents and siblings in Ohio. I don't even know if her siblings were aware of her.
Sarah and Bruce married in Indiana County, Pa in 1882, and shortly afterwards, moved to Ohio, where they proceeded to have 7 more children, one of whom was my grandmother.
I eventually went to the courthouse in Indiana, Pa, and looked for the records. A wonderful, genealogy-minded records clerk there, took an interest in my story, and helped me find the old dusty books in the basement. I have copies of the F&B and also the arrest for assault.