Son of Patrick Kane, Clare to NB (Can.) to Hartford CT

[smcarberry]

Encyclopedia of Connecticut biography
by Samuel Hart, American Historical Society
p. 170-71
"KANE, Thomas F.,
Physician, Public Official.

For a quarter of a century Dr. Kane, А. В., M. D., has been engaged in general medical practice in Hartford, the city of his birth. Although burdened with the cares of a large private practice, he has given much of his time to the preservation of public health by long and continuous service as member and as president of the city board of health, and in season and out of season preaches the gospel of prevention of disease by sanitary precaution.

There is no profession that requires more self-sacrifice than does the medical —sacrifice not only of personal comfort, but of personal feelings; no branch of public duty is more discouraging than that of impressing upon the public at large the necessity of sanitary precaution and the observance of sanitary regulations. Dr. Kane, however, for years so sacrificed himself and bore these discouragements, and he has seen much good result from his labors in improved conditions. The gospel he preached and the example he set has spread wonderfully, the need of civic sanitary precaution is better understood, and the public health more carefully safeguarded through his enlightening labors.

Dr. Kane is a son of Patrick and a grandson of Daniel Kane, both born in County Clare, Ireland, where the latter was a prosperous tenant farmer and a man of local influence. Patrick Kane, educated in the national schools of County Clare, also followed tilling the soil, but in 1846 crossed the ocean to St. John, New Brunswick. A year later he came to Hartford, where he died in 1867. He was a man of good natural ability, energetic and industrious, much respected by those who knew him. He married Bridget Spellacy, who survived him. She was also born in County Clare, and was the first of her family to come to the United States. One by one she sent for her family, and in 1846 her father, James Spellacy, came to complete the family circle, and lived retired until his death. When left a widow with four children, Mrs. Bridget Kane, a woman of strong character, bent her energies to their support, gave each a good education, and all richly repaid her disinterested love and sacrifice. Mary, the eldest, and her sister, Margaret Matilda, both became public school teachers ; Nellie, the home keeper ;and Thomas F., whose career will be traced, were the children of Patrick and Bridget (Spellacy) Kane.

Thomas F. Kane was born in Hartford, Connecticut, February 23, 1863, and until 1880 attended the South street and high schools of the city. In 1880 he entered the College of the Holy Cross at Worcester, Massachusetts, completed a classical course, and was graduated Bachelor of Arts, class of 1884. He had decided upon the medical profession, and after graduation from Holy Cross, at once entered the Medical Department of Harvard University, there remaining two years. He then entered Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York City, receiving his degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1887. In the same year he began practice in Hartford, and there amid those who have known him from boyhood he has fought his way upward from the bottom to the topmost rounds of the ladder of medical success. He has won alone and unaided, has never had a partner, has never lowered the high standard of professional ethics with which he began, has kept in close touch with every advance in medical thought, treatment or discovery, and has taught prevention as ardently as he has practiced cure of disease. He is a man of pleasing personality, and he numbers his friends wherever known. He is a member of the medical societies of city, county and State, and is highly regarded by his professional brethren.

In 1891 and again in 1897 he was elected for three-year terms on the board of school visitors. In 1893, by appointment of Mayor Hyde, he became health commissioner, proving so valuable a member that he was reappointed in 1895, again in 1899, and in the spring of 1900 was chosen president of the Board of Health, continuing as president until 1902. In 1904 he was reappointed until 1913, when he refused reappointment. He was appointed a member of the State Board of Charities, July i, 1903, serving until June, 1915, having during that period been president of the board three different terms of two years each.

He is a member of St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church, the church of his parents and family ; is a Knight of Columbus, and still displays, as of yore, a deep interest in public affairs. He is a director of the Dime Savings Bank and has other business interests of importance ; is treasurer of the Catholic Transcript, and consultant at the Isolation Hospital.

Dr. Kane married, October 10, 1905, Mary Ellen, daughter of Patrick H. Quinn, of Hartford, and has two children—Thomas Quinn, born March 5, 1908; and Mary Scott, born November 6, 1912."

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