Who Was George Sirrine?

How Did Sirrine Montessori Center Get Its Name?

  George Sirrine was born on December 6, 1818, in Code Springs, New York. As a young man he left New York to travel around Cape Horn on the sailing ship, The Brooklyn, and landed in San Francisco, California. He settled in San Francisco and married Esther Ann Crismon. He traveled to Utah and eventually settled near Paris, Idaho.

     In 1877, Brigham Young, president of the Mormon Church, asked him to help establish a colony in the Salt River Valley in the Arizona Territory. Sirrine, along with approximately 83 others (later known as the First Mesa Company) arrived in the valley in 1878. After exploring the area they chose to form their town on the mesa rather than in the river valley. The group felt that the ancient canal systems developed by the early inhabitants could be revived and the fertile land on the mesa could be productive. The Mesa town site was selected and surveyed. Theodore Sirrine was sent to the United States Land Office in Florence, Arizona, where he filed a claim on Section 22, the square mile from Mesa Drive to Country Club and University to Broadway. Charles Robson, George Sirrine, and Francis Pomeroy were named Trustees for the land.

     George and his wife, Esther, had nine children. George Sirrine died in Mesa on December 2, 1902. Because of his courage and the pioneering spirit represented by his family, the governing board of the Mesa Unified School District chose to name this school in his honor.

--Mesa Public Schools, Our Town: The Story of Mesa (Mesa, Arizona 1991).

In the 2023-2024 school year, Sirrine Elementary became Sirrine Montessori Center, the district's only standalone Montessori campus. To learn more about Montessori, please click here.