Ira Allen Harvey was born on December 12, 1842, in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, to Orange Harvey and Martha Carr. His father was a laborer who owned $300 of real estate and $200 of personal property by 1860. He grew up and attended school in Waterford, Vermont, and by the early 1860s, he was working as a farmer in St. Johnsbury.
He enlisted in the Union army on August 28, 1862, and he mustered in as a private in Company K of the 15th Vermont Infantry on October 22, 1862. He was promoted to corporal on November 13, 1862. He mustered out on August 5, 1863.
He returned to St. Johnsbury after leaving the army, and he earned a living as a mechanic. He married Ellen M. Pierce on July 19, 1866, and their daughter Palla was born around 1878. They moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, in the late 1860s, and he worked at the Springfield Armory. He applied for a federal pension in August 1889 and eventually secured one. By 1900, he was working as a steel polisher in Northampton. He died there of chronic nephritis on August 1, 1905.