Beaty, Mary (T.) 1947-

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BEATY, Mary (T.) 1947-

PERSONAL:

Born April 5, 1947, in Minneapolis, MN; daughter of George A. and Dorothy (a teacher; maiden name, Snouffer) Hannon; married Richard Beaty, December 21, 1969; children: Taran, Maev. Ethnicity: "Danish-American heritage." Education: University of Iowa, B.Ed.; University of Toronto, M.L.S. Politics: "Progressive." Religion: "Humanist." Hobbies and other interests: Activities related to human rights, social justice, intellectual freedom, and ethics education.

ADDRESSES:

Home—576 Henry St., Apt. 3, Brooklyn, NY 11231. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER:

Toronto Public Library, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, children's librarian, 1975-80; Kingston-Frontenac Public Library, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, coordinator of children's and youth services, 1980-99; New York Cares, New York, NY, coordinator of Community Resource Center, 2001—. United Nations, moderator of Council of Ethics Based Organizations, 2001—; United Nations, member of Working Group on the Rights of the Child of the Congress of NGOs.

MEMBER:

American Library Association, American Coalition for the International Criminal Court, National Writers Union, American Humanist Association (United Nations representative, 2000—), Humanist Society of Metropolitan New York.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Children's Service Award of Merit, Ontario Library Association, 1996.

WRITINGS:

(With Maureen Garvie) George Johnson's War (young adult novel), Groundwood Books (Toronto, Canada), 2002.

Contributor to library journals, magazines, and newspapers.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

A publication project dealing with ethics and non-profit organizations.

SIDELIGHTS:

Mary Beaty told CA: "George Johnson's story emerged on a series of rural car trips through the Mohawk Valley and Loyalist country in southern Ontario. My coauthor, Canadian Maureen Garvie, and I, a transplanted Minnesotan living in Kingston, Ontario, had spent two years tuning our librarians' DNA to unearthing information about Mohawk matron Molly Brant, as we approached the bicentennial of her death in 1996. My little nineteenth-century cottage in Kingston was built on Molly's land grant, a gift from a grateful British government for her aid during the War for American Independence. We followed this trail backwards, on the path of many historians in both New York and Canada, trying to find the heartbeat behind this mysterious and dynamic woman, who impressed so many people but left little physical trace.

"Molly's bicentenary was celebrated with appropriate ceremonies and participation from the Native community, the church, and local dignitaries. A statue was commissioned, speeches and plaques presented. We wrote a newspaper piece and continued to sift legend, politics, history, and family records, trying to extract a picture of the extreme changes and contrasts Molly and her children encountered as the American Revolution changed the destiny of so many lives.

"Our novel started from Molly's point of view, but we gradually switched to her daughter Peggy, and then, somehow George's voice emerged. We knew George had owned a house just down the hill from where Molly, her grandchildren, and their good friend Reverend John Stuart were buried. We knew George had claimed Molly's property after her death but was denied that legacy when he could not produce a legal marriage certificate for his parents. He left the city to become a schoolmaster near the Six Nations settlement on the Grand River, and the Johnson-Brant legacy faded. George, the only surviving son, who bridged the Native, white, British, and new Canadian world, and who was constantly surrounded by all those sisters and mothers and clan mothers, seemed both a real character and a cipher. On our backwoods car trips, we began to simply try to tell the story through George's eyes. Then I moved to New York City, and we continued our long-distance research in two countries and wrote our book by e-mail.

"The clues were so few in either country that often all we had was a glimpse from afar: prehistoric Indian pottery and French crystal fragments from Molly's privy, a copy of the Mohawk prayer book, a fragile store ledger with the mark of Little Abraham, a soldier's record of the Valley raid. Images were absent; there were paintings of Sir William Johnson and more paintings of George's uncle Joseph Brant, scattered and copied from Philadelphia to Cooperstown (and eventually reproduced as a ubiquitous decal on an old Victrola record player). But except for a heartbreakingly copy-of-a-copy of a posthumous painting of Peter and a poor picture of his aunt Anne, we can only guess that George resembled his uncle.

"We have had, instead, to walk the hills of the Mohawk, and the banks of the St. Lawrence, and the trails of our imaginations. We hope that we did not do ill to the memories of these real people. We have obviously created our own version of time and circumstance. But we trust that some of it is based on the wisps of the lives we have glimpsed in the corners of experience.

"We also hope that the story of one child, and one family, caught in a war not of their making, but one in which they showed great courage and resilience, will help inform the lives of other children and families facing events in our own times, and in times to come."