His maternal grandfather was Caleb O. Halsted, president of the Bank of the Manhattan Company.

[2] Kean was born at "Ursino", his ancestral estate near Elizabeth, New Jersey.

He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for United States Senator in 1924 and was elected to the Senate in 1928, serving a single six-year term before a failed re-election bid, losing to former Governor A. Harry Moore.

Together, they were the parents of:[1] Kean died on December 27, 1941, at St. Luke's Hospital in New York City.

[1] After a funeral at Grace Church in New York,[5] he was interred in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.