Miriam B. MurphyUtah History Encyclopedia, 1994 Thomas Kearns was born in 1862 in Oxford County, Ontario, Canada, to Margaret Maher and Thomas Kearns. He moved with his Irish immigrant parents to a farm in Nebraska and there obtained a grammar-school education. The development of mining in the West drew him in 1883 to Park City, Utah, where he worked, prospected, …