John Tracy, the youngest child of Irish immigrants would see much of the United States throughout his lifetime. From his early beginnings in Northern New York he began working on his father's farm. He married in Plattsburgh and left the area of his childhood to pursue a better life. Tracy followed some of his older siblings west to Chicago, Illinois where he worked as a blacksmith and carpenter. His journey did not stop in America's second largest city but progressed westward into the Great Plains of Kansas. While settling in Atchison, Kansas John Tracy began working as a carpenter for the Union Pacific Railroad which built and connect America's coasts. Atchison, Kansas, however, was not his last stop. Called the Transcontinental Railroad, the Union Pacific connected New York City with San Francisco and once a months-long and perilous journey, now took less than a week by train even in the 1880s. More cities like Atchison began as depots and water stops. For settlers like John Tracy and his family the paths of the railroads were lifelines. He followed the Union Pacific all the way to Denver, Colorado stopping at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. By the time Tracy reached Denver in 1884 he was already 46 years of age and this was his final stop. He would become the first Tracy family member to venture that far into the Great West. Denver, Colorado was considered a frontier town in 1884 and gold was still being discovered around that same time. Here he and his family settled in and enjoyed the life and freedom the west provided which was a far cry from the noise and overcrowding of the cities. John Tracy, the man who followed and helped build one of America's greatest railroads is warmly commemorated here in grateful esteem and recognition by his third great nephew, Michael T. Tracy. This work is dedicated to the Memory of John Tracy.
The family surname of Tracy has a lineage going back to the year of 1795 when Daniel Tracy was born in Kilkeel, County Down in present day Northern Ireland. There are several recorded spellings of the surname including Tracy, Tracey and Treacy. The Gaelic spelling of the surname is O'Treasaigh which translates as "The descendant of the war-like one." However, it is English in its earliest recorded origins dating back to the followers of William, The Conqueror, in 1066. The current branch of the surname dates to Daniel Tracy (1795-1876) who left Ireland in late 1821 and settled with his wife, Mary Hanna and two young children in Grand Isle, Vermont later relocating to Plattsburgh, Clinton County, New York. This is the most complete and comprehensive book written to date on this family. Over 40 years of information was researched and now is assembled on the history of this family covering 7 generations spanning over two hundred years. This work included biographies and photographs of Tracy forebears as well as encompassing the present day living descendants. These are the records of our ancestors and it is to their memories that this work is lovingly dedicated for all time.
Writing from Cavite El Viejo in the Philippines during the Spanish American War, a 19 year old Corporal wrote his sister: "What will I do if I should have to change to a climate of 6 degrees below? Do you think I could be able to stand it after coming from a country where I doubt if it ever went below 40 degrees? Don't imagine for a minute that us soldiers care for 1/4 of the cold. That you are having there now (in March I mean) our blood is so thin and vitality so low from climatic diseases that 1/4 of that cold would kill us all in a month. Say Sister ask Aunt Ellen if there was any roving spirits in the Cronin family, for if there was, his sins of roving must have passed the other generations and singled me out to keep the thing a-going." The 19 year old soldier penned part of his own unique future on that day in the tropics of the Philippines during the Spanish American War. Edward J. Cronin would indeed travel and reside in one of the coldest and most desolate regions of the United States, first journeying to Alaska in 1917 and staying there for 30 years. He took his first plane trip there and traveled by dog sled from Hot Springs to Bethel, Alaska covering 1,100 miles in 34 days in 1929. Considered a pioneer Alaskan, he was a bookkeeper working as a traveling auditor for the Northern Commercial Company and fiscal agent for the Matanuska Valley Colony for many years. Cronin was also in charge of the commissary department of the Alaska railroad and the engineer for the American Bridge Company helping build the railroad through Nenana and Denali National Park. As a result, he had a part in the ceremonies when President Harding drove the golden spike at Nenana in 1923 when the railroad was opened for traffic. As a soldier during the Spanish American War he had already journeyed throughout the world and when he came back to the United States, he would visit a good portion of the country as well. Even in his later years, Cronin traveled back to his ancestral homeland of Ireland. This then is the unique and adventurous life of a lion of the seasons, Edward J. Cronin.
