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Citizen Kane

Denison Resident
1910 - 1922


J. O. O'Kane was born July 5, 1882, in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The name on his birth certificate is James Joseph O'Kane. From that same document we learn that his parents were John and Liza Brodenek O'Kane. John was an engineer, born in Ireland. Liza was born in New York City. We next find James O'Kane in the historical record in the 1900 Census, where he was a 17-year-old farm laborer boarding with the Goin family on their farm in Fannin County. It's a long way from New York City to rural Fannin County, Texas, but there he was. It's possible that New York City James and Fannin County James were not the same person, but there are good reasons for thinking they were. On the census form his birth date of July 1882 and place of birth in New York both match the information on his birth certificate. We know that he turned up in Denison in 1910, and that tends to corroborate his surprising presence in Fannin County a decade earlier.
He appears as J. O. Kane in Denison newspapers and as Joseph O. Kane in Denison city directories; therefore, I will refer to him as Kane, even though his descendants use the name O'Kane. The December 11, 1910, issue of The Sunday Gazetteer contains his first ad for the business he had just purchased, Union Woolen Mills at 209 W. Main Street. Near the bottom of the same page is a paragraph complimentary of the new manager as a person and a businessman (misidentified as J. A. Kane instead of J. O. Kane). Union Woolen Mills sold men's clothing, mainly suits.


The Sunday Gazetteer
Sunday, December 11, 1910
pg. 4



J. O. Kane's shop on Main Street was narrow because he shared the ground floor of 209 with C. J. Quinn's Jewelry and Loans.
The identity of the taller man at left is unknown.


It opened in April of 1909 under the ownership of Sam Mathews. He sold it to Sam Hill in the fall, and Hill sold it to Kane at the end of the following year. Kane is identified in the ads as the manager, but The Denison Daily Herald referred to him as the proprietor when he married in 1913.  Among the mysteries surrounding J. O. Kane are how many wives he had and what became of them. His last known wife was Bernice Lee Benner (1889-1964) of Mound City, Holt County, Missouri.



The newspaper report of their 1913 wedding says the Kanes "will welcome their friends at No. 319 North Rusk avenue." That was a temporary residence. The two-story house sat across from St. Patrick's, and today the address is a parking lot. Before and after the Kanes' wedding the house was occupied by J. W. and Mary Corcoran. He was an insurance agent.  The Corcorans possibly either offered their home to the Kanes while they were away somewhere, or they took them in as houseguests until they could find a place of their own. Before the 1913 City Directory was published in August, the Kanes had moved to 1019 W. Main Street. The 1915 and 1917 city directories list them at 109 N. Scullin.
Before he married Bernice in 1913, he was listed in the 1911 Denison City Directory at 416 N. Scullin Avenue with a spouse named Alta. No other information about her is known to exist. In April of the previous year, eight months before Kane arrived in Denison, a census taker in Fort Worth enumerated a man there named Joseph O. Kane. He was 29, he was born in New York, and he was a tailor. Our man was a year younger, but his place of birth and occupation match the man in Fort Worth. "Joseph O. Kane" is also how our man is listed in Denison city directories. The Fort Worth Kane had a 26-year-old wife named Alice and a five-year-old son named Clyde. Both were born in Missouri, but nothing more is known about either of them.







James O. Kane
Katherine Virginia Kane b. 22 Apr 1915
James Joseph Kane b. 4 Oct 1913
Bernice Lee Benner Kane
Kane's great-grandson says that Great-grandma Kane returned to Mound City, Missouri, around 1922 with her two children but without their father. Mrs. J. O. Kane last appears in Denison newspapers in the Personals column of The Denison Herald in the issue of June 5, 1922. The snippet merely reports that she had been a visitor to Sherman. J. O. Kane himself is last mentioned in newspaper ads for his business in January of 1921. He and Bernice and Union Woolen Mills are all listed in the 1921 Denison City Directory, published in March of that year. None of them are listed in the 1925 directory. Bernice claimed to be a widow in the 1930 Census in Missouri. No trace of her husband appears in any known record after 1921. Patrick O'Kane wrote that Bernice resisted all entreaties from her children and grandchildren to provide any information about her mysterious husband. She refused to discuss him at all. They have inferred that he may have deserted her and the children. If so, did he also desert Alice and Clyde in Fort Worth? And what about Alta, his 1911 spouse in Denison? If Bernice knew the answers to those questions, she took them to her grave. But she did save her photographs.

The photo of James Joseph, Jr., when he was about a year old, was taken when they lived at 109 N. Scullin Ave.
The vehicle may have been parked in front of their house.






625 W. Heron Street



Family moved to this home about 1919.
It's their last known address in Denison.
Katherine & Junior in side yard
Katherine Virginia Kane



Katherine & Junior in backyard.
625 W. Heron Street
Photograph of Mr. & Mrs. Kane in the balloon appears to have been posed in a studio.



All Photographs courtesy of J. Patrick O'Kane
great-grandson of J.J. O'Kane (aka Kane)





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