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Thomas L. Kane
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Thomas L. Kane

Credit: Biographical Sketches of McKean County, from the book "History of the Counties if McKean, Elk, Cameron, and Potter, Pennsylvania, by J.H. Beers and Company Publishers, 1890.

The son of a prominent Philadelphia judge, Thomas Leiper Kane (1822-1883), moved to McKean County, Pennsylvania, where he practiced law. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Kane raised a regiment of riflemen nicknamed the Bucktails because of the deer tails worn in their caps. On the second day at Gettysburg, the Bucktails fought along the crest of Cemetery Ridge just north of Little Round Top. After the war, McKean would make his fortune in lumber and coal. As President of the New York, Lake Erie and Western Coal and Railroad Company he, in 1882, commissioned Pennsylvania's famous Kinzua Viaduct.

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