Br. Benezet Thomas

Roderick Kane was born the son of Sir Robert Kane, professor of Chemistry at the Royal Dublin Society, and Katherine Baily Kane, a noted botanist, on August 25, 1848, in Blackrock, Ireland. After receiving his degree in Engineer­ing at age twenty-one in 1869, Roderick emigrated to California where he took a job for the railroad, but after only one year he sought entrance to religious life at the Novitiate in Oakland, California. He received the habit and the religious name of Brother Benezet Thomas in September of 1870. In June of 1871 he was assigned to St. Mary's College and nine years later he was named President of the College. In 1883 he worked at the Amawalk Scholasticate in New York and in 1886 was named President of Manhattan College. There he taught the future Cardinals Hays and Mundelein as well as Archbishop Dowling. In 1891 he was placed in charge of the Normal School and Training College in Waterford, Ireland, and in 1911 he was named Assistant of the Superior General in charge of America, Ireland, Australia and India. He retired to Castletown in 1923 where he died at age eighty, having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for fifty-nine years.