Hitchcock O'Leary Family

Biography

Harriet Hitchcock O’Leary was born February 4, 1913, in Boise, Idaho to Lula “Cookie” Metcalf and Rudolph George Hitchcock. She attended the College of Idaho and was initiated into the Beta Kappa Chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma in 1934. She married Kenneth Webster O’Leary on October 14, 1936, in Boise, Idaho at St. Michael’s Cathedral. Together they raised two children: Ann and Brock. Harriet Hitchcock O’Leary died February 4, 2008.

Lula “Cookie” Metcalf was born September 7, 1884, in Kansas to Harriet Augusta Fish and Aldeverd J. Metcalf. She attended Ottawa University for the 1909-1910 academic year, then married Randolph George Hitchcock on July 23, 1910. R.G. “Hitch” Hitchcock was born March 15, 1886, in Kansas to Juliette Wandell and John B. Hitchcock. He left school at age 15 to work, then attended jewelers and watchmakers’ school in Kansas City, Missouri. After working in a jewelry store in Sturgis, South Dakota he and Lula moved to Boise in 1912 where he opened a jewelry store in the Idanha Building on Main Street. He owned and leased service stations around Idaho, opened a car dealership around 1927, and operated two ranches near Marsing, Idaho. Together Lula and Hitch operated their businesses and raised their daughter. Hitch died March 11, 1944, and Lula died May 13, 1966; both are interred at Morris Hill Cemetery.

Kenneth Webster O’Leary was born December 28, 1907, in Boise, Idaho to Anna Belle Webster and Walter Francis “Frank” O’Leary. As a boy he began working at the Hyde Park Grocery, then with Joe Albertson, and later for the M and W Market. He became a store manager for Safeway in Burns, Oregon before attending law school at University of Idaho where he graduated with a bachelor’s in 1933. While attending college he was initiated into the Kappa Beta Phi Idaho Chapter, and the Gamma Eta Chapter of Sigma Chi. After graduation he worked as an attorney for a private law firm in Boise, as an Ada County Prosecutor, and as an attorney during World War II in the Philippines and Seoul, Korea. Kenneth O’Leary died November 17, 1967.

Anna Belle “Bella” Webster was born June 28, 1880, or 1881 in Mountain Home, Idaho to Martha Catherine Goodwin and Allen Vashni Webster. She married Frank O’Leary July 16, 1902, in Meridian, Idaho. Together they had two children: Kenneth and Keith. Walter Francis “Frank” O’Leary was born June 22, 1879, or 1881, in Oregon to Alice Maria Vernon and John Charles O’Leary. He worked as a rancher and sheepman in Oregon, Montana, and Idaho. Frank and Bella divorced in 1913, and she remarried in 1926 to Chick Smoot. Frank died on October 22, 1938, in Butte, Montana. Bella died on November 4, 1951, in San Francisco, California.

Found in 1 Collection or Record: