Thomas L. Kane
Kane, McKean County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Commander of the Civil war "Bucktail Regiment" and founder of the borough of Kane. Breveted Major General in 1863. A friend of Brigham Young and staunch supporter of the Mormon pioneers. He died, 1883, and was buried at this chapel, built at his direction in 1876-78.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
Thomas L. Kane was one of 19th-century America's most fascinating idealists: a Civil War general who raised and led the famed "Bucktail Regiment" of Pennsylvania riflemen, and an outspoken friend of the persecuted Mormons when few others would defend them. He founded the borough of Kane in the northern Pennsylvania wilderness and was breveted major general in 1863. He died in 1883 and lies buried at the chapel he directed to be built here in the late 1870s.
Why it matters
Kane bridged two great American struggles—the fight to preserve the Union and the defense of religious minorities—embodying a conscience-driven activism that shaped the nation's moral life.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The mid-19th century was the great testing time of the American Republic, and the Civil War drew men into public life from every corner of the North. Pennsylvania sent enormous numbers of soldiers to the Union cause, including regiments raised from its rugged northern counties. It was an age that prized both martial courage and moral conviction — and a few remarkable figures managed to embody both.
The northern reaches of Pennsylvania, in McKean County, were wild and heavily forested in this era, the kind of country where a determined man might carve a whole new town out of the wilderness. This was frontier development of a distinctly American kind: founding a settlement, giving it a name, and willing a community into being on the edge of the map.
It was also an age of fierce arguments over religious freedom. The mid-1800s saw intense hostility directed at the Mormon pioneers, whose beliefs and westward migration made them targets of suspicion and violence. To defend such an unpopular minority took real courage of conscience — and that, as much as any battlefield record, is part of what this marker commemorates.
People & events
Thomas L. Kane was, by any measure, one of the more extraordinary Americans of his century. When the Civil War came he raised and led the famed "Bucktail Regiment," a Pennsylvania rifle outfit known for the deer tails its men wore in their caps as a badge of marksmanship and identity. For his service he was breveted major general in 1863 — a brevet being an honorary elevation in rank, granted in recognition of distinguished conduct.
But Kane's convictions ran well beyond the battlefield. He was a friend of Brigham Young and a staunch supporter of the Mormon pioneers at a time when defending them won a man no popularity at all. That willingness to stand with a persecuted minority is central to how he is remembered, and it sets him apart from the ordinary run of soldier-statesmen.
He was also a builder. Kane founded the borough that bears his name in the northern Pennsylvania wilderness, planting a community where there had been forest. He died in 1883 and was buried at the chapel he had directed to be built here in the late 1870s — a resting place he chose and shaped himself, in the town he had brought into being.
Its place in the American story
Kane's life bridges two of the great American struggles of his century. One was the fight to preserve the Union, which he served in uniform at the head of a celebrated regiment. The other was the defense of religious minorities' right to exist and worship freely — a quieter, less celebrated battle, but one that goes to the heart of what the country claims to stand for.
His friendship with the Mormon pioneers is the rarer part of the story. In an era when it was safe and even popular to condemn them, Kane chose to defend them. That kind of conscience-driven advocacy — standing up for an unpopular group because it is right, not because it is rewarded — is a strand of American idealism worth remembering, and it is embodied unusually clearly in one man's life.
Add to that his work as a town-founder, and Kane becomes a figure who touched several of the era's defining themes at once: the Union war effort, the settlement of the frontier, and the long American argument over religious liberty. Few local markers commemorate a life that reaches so widely into the national story.
If you visit
Kane sits high in the forested country of northern Pennsylvania, and the setting is part of the point: this is the wilderness that Thomas L. Kane chose to build a town in. The landscape itself testifies to the ambition it took to plant a community here.
The chapel at the heart of this site is unusually personal. Kane directed its construction in the late 1870s and chose to be buried here after his death in 1883 — so you are not just visiting a memorial to the man, you are visiting a place he deliberately made and made his own. That gives it a quiet intimacy that grander monuments often lack.
For a traveler, this is a rewarding stop on a road trip through Pennsylvania's northern tier, where Civil War history meets frontier settlement. Come prepared to think about a man who was at once a general, a town-builder, and a defender of the persecuted — and let the forested quiet around the chapel do the rest.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Thomas L. Kane
- · Brigham Young
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Bucktails
Smethport, PA · est. 1949
When the Civil War broke out in April 1861, Col. Thomas L. Kane rallied about 100 volunteers who gathered at Smethport on the 24th before marching off to Harrisburg. These backwoods marksmen pinned tails of buck deer to their caps as a badge of identity, giving rise to the celebrated nickname "the Bucktails." They formed the core of the famed 42nd Pennsylvania Regiment, which earned a reputation as some of the Union's finest sharpshooters.
McKean County
Smethport, PA · est. 1981
Formed in 1804 from Lycoming County and named for Pennsylvania governor Thomas McKean, this northern county long drew its living from oil, gas, and timber. In 1861 the county seat of Smethport became a mustering ground when the celebrated "Bucktails" gathered here, a hard-fighting Civil War regiment known for the deer tails pinned to their caps. The name marked a rugged frontier people answering the Union's call.
Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument
Warren, PA
In the decades after the Civil War, towns across the North raised "Soldiers' and Sailors'" monuments to the local men who had marched off to preserve the Union. Warren County, in Pennsylvania's northwestern oil-and-timber country, honored its own with this granite tribute, its verses drawn from Theodore O'Hara's famous elegy "The Bivouac of the Dead." The lines about silent tents on "fame's eternal camping ground" became a fixture of American war memorials, binding a small county's grief to a national vocabulary of mourning.
Pennsylvania Memorial Home
Brookville, PA · est. 2019
A generation after the Civil War, the men who had served the Union were aging, and their families often had nowhere to turn. In 1890 Kate Scott and Annie Wittenmyer of the Woman's Relief Corps founded a home in Brookville that broke new ground: it took in not only veterans but also their wives, children, widows, and orphans. It is remembered as the first such home in the nation to care for whole families.