Editor’s note: Matthew Boyer of Kane is a freshman political science major at Saint Vincent College of Latrobe. He is a local historian and serves as a board member of the Kane Historic Preservation Society and chairman of the Ludlow Historical Society.
A man of vision, imagination, action and deeds, whose life story is more like exciting fiction than fact, was the founder of the Borough of Kane. Gen. Thomas Leiper Kane set the stage for the development of this area and lived to see a town emerge from the wilderness — a robust infant bearing his name.
Kane the man was born Jan. 27, 1822, in Philadelphia. He was the second of seven children born to U.S. District Judge John Kintzing Kane and the former Jane Duval Leiper, and was raised in the wealth and prominence of the city. In 1843, as a young man in Paris, early accounts of his dedication to “human liberty” disclosed that Kane participated in fighting behind the barricades in the French Revolution of the 1840s.
During his time there, Kane befriended the French philosopher Auguste Comte, a man who had turned a critical eye on society. Perhaps it was in those informative years that Kane was determined to one day turn philosophical principles into reality; a reality that would be enshrined in a uniquely productive and civil little town on a hill.
Kane also spent his early years in Philadelphia where he was known as a philanthropist. He maintained an orphanage at his own expense; managed a house of refuge; helped found the Jefferson Women’s Medical College; and was an advocate for the oppressed, Native Americans, prisoners and slaves.
Kane later expressed interest in a political career, seeking a position in the California government at the end of the Mexican War (1848), but was unsuccessful in his bid. He briefly clerked for his father, then obtained the position of Clerk of the District Court in Eastern Pennsylvania.
Kane was distressed over the passage of the Compromise of 1850, which increased his legal responsibility to return fleeing slaves under the Fugitive Slave Act. He submitted his resignation to his father, who had the younger Kane jailed for contempt of court. The U.S. Supreme Court later overturned the arrest. Upon his release, Kane became increasingly active in the abolitionist movement.
Kane first met with members of The Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter-Day Saints in Philadelphia in May 1846. He offered his advice and assistance in their dispute with the U.S. government, and their immigration to the Western territories. Kane and Jesse C. Little, LDS Elder in the East, met with the secretary of state, secretary of war and President James K. Polk. As a result of their meetings and negotiations, the government agreed to enlist 500 men of the church to serve in the Mexican-American War.
Kane also obtained permission for the Mormon settlers to occupy Pottawattamie and Omaha Indian lands along the Missouri. On July 17, 1846, Kane met with church leaders and Capt. James Allen to create the Mormon Battalion. When Utah was granted a territorial government, President Millard Fillmore asked Kane to be the first territorial governor. He declined the post and recommended LDS President Brigham Young to fill the position.
In 1857, Kane traveled to Utah to diffuse hostilities between the Mormon church and the U.S. government, preventing the “Utah War.” As a result of that diplomacy, he and Brigham Young became lifelong friends. Today, a statue of Kane sits in the Northwest Garden of the Utah State Capitol Building in Salt Lake City as a tribute to his role as a peacemaker.
In 1856, John Kane became one of the leading investors and creators of the McKean and Elk Land and Improvement Company. The company made the decision to develop the land of Northwestern Pennsylvania, beginning with the construction of a railroad from Philadelphia to Erie. Thomas Kane was hired to travel to the still-unsettled area to survey the land and oversee the construction of the railroad.
Although he came to the area because of the railroad, Kane found something even better — a place to build a community. He brought his family to the area he had come to love. He and his wife Elizabeth rode horses into the settlement, soon to become their new home. On the side of Thomas’s saddle were his crutches needed after being wounded in the Civil War, and on the side of Elizabeth’s were lilacs from the Gray Gardens at Gray’s Ferry Inn in Philadelphia.
Ironically, unlike how he is remembered in Utah, in his home state of Pennsylvania Kane is better remembered as a warrior. He is noted as the first Pennsylvanian to volunteer to fight in President Lincoln’s Union Army. Kane volunteered to recruit a group of backwoods marksmen from northwestern Pennsylvania to follow him into battle. These men would later become known as the Bucktails, for the deer tails they wore in their hats.
The Bucktails fought courageously under Kane’s leadership. Kane himself fought in 35 engagements in the Civil War, including the Battle of Gettysburg. For his heroic service at Gettysburg, he was awarded the rank of brevet major general and his exploits in battle are still recounted today.
During the Battle of Dranesville, Kane was shot in the right cheek, blowing out a few of his teeth, injuring his jawbone, producing long-term vision problems and leaving a scar on his face after the wound healed. It is said that Kane grew his beard after that incident, for he didn’t want his children to see the results of war or armed conflict.
In the Battle of Harrisonburg, Kane was shot in the leg. Badly wounded and fatigued, Kane was taken behind enemy lines. It is said that Kane’s wife Elizabeth bravely talked herself through the lines to be by her husband’s side and nurse him back to health.
After Gettysburg, Kane left the battlefield in 1863, and returned to the wilds of Pennsylvania, where he began his settlement. With Kane out of the war, he and his family finished building their home on the highest hilltop in the settlement. Today, the Kane family residence is simply known as “The Old Homestead.”
It wasn’t just the natural beauty of the untouched wilderness that drew Kane to the area. The cool climate and bracing air helped to ease the pulmonary problems that had plagued him since childhood. On his wooded hilltop, Kane drew the figure he would need to turn his vision into a thriving town for generations to come.
In the late 1800s, not enough people were entering the new community to satisfy Kane’s vision. Looking for advice, he turned to his friend Horace Greeley, an influential New York newspaper editor who had a hand in convincing Americans to travel west.
Greeley told Kane to go east — all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to Sweden. There, Greeley promised Kane, he would find plenty of people who would be willing to move to the United States. Kane posted ads in Swedish newspapers and, soon, Swedes seeking a new life began to make the journey across the Atlantic. They came as indentured servants to Kane, working for him to pay off their passage.
Kane sold them farmland and building materials at a reduced price in belief that immediate sacrifice assures eventual gain. He was not disappointed. The Swedes, and waves of other ethnic groups that followed, were hard workers and took advantage of the town’s most abundant source — trees.
The sawmills and tanneries drew more people to the area, and on his hilltop, Kane’s vision of an ideal town took root. Kane laid out an orderly grid of streets and provided for adequate water as well as gas utility services. He set the moral tone of the town with the prohibition of the sale of alcohol and injunction against elicit sexual practices.
Kane also set aside land strictly for the enjoyment of the townspeople. His original borough plan called for three large parks encompassing several hundred acres just to have for the recreational use of the community.
Once the town began to develop, Kane began working for the railroad again. He joined with, and later became the chairman of, the New York and Lake Erie Western Railroad and Coal Company. He oversaw the construction of a small railroad from Mount Alton and the Dagus Mines near Ridgway to the main line of the Erie Railroad in Olean, N.Y. With this project, Kane oversaw the construction of the Kinzua Viaduct over the Kinzua Valley from 1881-82. This viaduct, at one point the highest railroad bridge in the world, was at times called the Eighth Wonder of the World.
Kane died on Dec. 26, 1883, in Philadelphia after succumbing to case of pneumonia. He was 61 years old. He was originally buried in the Kane family vault in Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia. A year later, he was moved from the vault to the town he founded and loved most. He was buried in between the doors of the Presbyterian Church, now the Kane Memorial Chapel, a small church that he had commissioned for his wife, Elizabeth.
A man of many talents, Kane sought out to make the world a better place for all. He instilled into people a sense of duty not just to us but to all others we encounter every single day. He dedicated himself to live life on a manageable scale — in which church and community are essential and children and adults are equally important to the growth and prosperity of life itself.
In the end, these ideals were used as the framework to build a little town on a hilltop that continues to bear his name to this day.
