Elizabeth Wood Kane writings

Elizabeth Wood Kane (1836-1909)

L. Tom Perry Special Collections is pleased to announce the availability of a new digitized collection:Elizabeth Wood Kane writings (Vault MSS 792, Series 6, Subseries 4).  This is part of the sixth series of the larger Kane family papers (Vault MSS 792), which primarily relate to Thomas and Elizabeth Kane. This subseries contains autobiographical and literary writings by Elizabeth Wood Kane. Most of the documents, including travel accounts, focus on her life and experiences. She writes about her husband Thomas L. Kane serving in the Civil War, her experiences with the Mormons in the West, and also includes family history projects, getting to meet President Ulysses S. Grant, and other family affairs. Highlights among these are writings related to her publication Twelve Mormon Homes, and her unpublished historical accounts of the founding of Kane, Pennsylvania. Materials also include family history writings like the autobiography of her father. Dated 1856-1921.

Elizabeth Denniston Wood was born on May 12, 1836 to William Wood and Harriet Amelia Kane, and was raised in England. Her family emigrated to New York in 1844. In 1853 she married Thomas L. Kane. With her husband and four children, Harriet Amelia Kane (1854-1896); Elisha Kent Kane (1856-1935); Evan O’Neill Kane (1861-1932); and Thomas Leiper Kane, Jr. (1863-1929), Elizabeth founded the town of Kane, Pennsylvania. She worked tirelessly for the prohibition of alcohol both in Kane, and the wider United States. Her 1872 travels with her husband in Utah are recorded in her book “Twelve Mormon Homes.” She obtained a medical degree from the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia in 1883. After her husband’s death later that year, she became more involved in social and philanthropic causes including the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and the Kane Summit Hospital Association. She died peacefully while sleeping May 25, 1909.