Beat Harty

Alumni Spotlight

A lifelong O'Neill resident who has figured importantly in the city's history celebrated her 100th birthday Sat., November 23.

Mrs. Harty's health is fragile and she requires live-in care.

Beatrice Cronin Harty, widow of the late Patrick "Pat" Harty, is the sole survivor of the family of the late Dennis H. and Kathleen Rose Lorge Cronin.

Affectionately known as "Beat," Mrs. Harty was born in O'Neill in 1896.

The second child of five, she attended St. Mary's Grade School and graduated from St. Mary's Academy which is now St. Mary's High School. She is the only living member of the graduating class of 1913.

Her mother, daughter of an immigrant family that had settled at Randolph, died young, leaving Mrs. Harty in the role of surrogate mother and housekeeper for an older brother, Julius D., two younger sister, Geraldine.

For 10 years, she served as deputy clerk of the Holt County District Court under the late Ira H. Moss.

In Moss's autobiography, "The Chosen Land," he wrote: "Miss Cronin was intelligent, dependable and exercised much tact in dealing with the legal fraternity and general public."

He said that he "appreciated her faithful dedication to duty," adding "I've valued her friendship through the years."

Her husband, Pat, was born in Shullsberg, WI October 7, 1889.

They became the parents of a daughter, Ann, and a son, Thomas.

Ann died of injuries suffered in May 1944, a vivacious 16-year-old, when she fell from the cargo platform of a small truck.

Tom died in 1994 in Northbrook, Illinois, following an extended cancer illness.

Pat Harty, prominent in the O'Neill business community, died May 12, 1952.

Mrs. Harty helped organize St. Patrick's Altar Society and St. Mary's Alumnae (later Alumni) Assn., and she was active in school affairs for many years.

She was a daily communicant at St. Patrick's Church, two blocks from her home, until advanced age forced her to curtail activities.

She served many years as a trustee of the Grattan Township Library, serving successive terms as chairman.

Mrs. Harty's paternal grandparents were John and Hannorah Harrington Cronin, who abandoned a small potato plot in Ireland to pursue life in the New World.

They were part of the influx of Western European commoners. Most of the Irish were stranded in Eastern tenements and mining towns.

Mrs. Harty was intensely interested in the background and plight of Irish immigrants. Her grandfather had worked in copper mines in Michigan's Upper Pennisula until recruited by Gen. John O'Neill to come to an Irish-American colony in Nebraska.

Gen. O'Neill recruited Irish families from the Michigan mines and Pennsylvania coal fields to form colonies in O'Neill, Atkinson, Emmet, Greeley and Spalding.

Mrs. Harty remembers how the Irish colonists, without capital, were not suited to endure cold winters, scorching summers, drought and breaking prairie sod to raise crops.

A veritable encyclopedia on colonist families, she tracked families who gave up the soil and others who stayed on to help build Holt County.

Her life reflects a kaleidoscopic view of O'Neill's primitive and robust beginning to the vibrant and growing regional market city that it is today.

Her father figured prominently in O'Neill's history as editor of The Frontier newspaper and in state politics.

Born Jan. 10, 1869, at Eagle Harbor, Mich., he began a newspaper career in 1890 and in 1892 he acquired The Frontier, and O'Neill weekly newspaper that had been founded in 1880.

He served as Omaha-based U.S. Marshall under Republican presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover, from 1921 to 1932. He served in the Nebraska House of Representatives from 1915 to 1917 and in the State Senate from 1919 to 1921. He retired in 1945 as a Unicameral senator.

His years in government work involved extended absence from O'Neill, during which the late Romaine Saunders edited The Frontier.

He married his second wife, Faye Farran, in Omaha in January 1919. That marriage produced two children, Margorie Cronin Pruitt of Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Richard who died in Oregon.

Cronin sold The Frontier to Carroll "Cal" and Margaret "Peggy" Stewart in 1946. Cronin died March 21, 1947.

Mrs. Harty's brother, Julius D. Cronin, was a successful O'Neill attorney and past president of the Nebraska State Bar Association. A life-long bachelor, he resided with Mrs. Harty until his death June 10, 1986.

He figured prominently in the development of the multimillion dollar Creighton University library.

Francis N. became president of the then-owned O'Neill National Bank which is now the First United Bank.

Clinton, a Grand Island lawyer, became a director of First National Bank in Grand Island.

Geraldine resided in Santa Barbara, California.