From a Wexford Farm to the White House: Four Generations of John F. Kennedy’s Family

It took four generations for a family of Irish emigrants to reach the White House. Their name was not always linked with wealth, power and politics. This National Park Service article follows John F. Kennedy's father's side of the family from a farmer's son in Ireland who left after the Great Famine to the 35th president of the United States.

An 1868 illustration by Henry Doyle of family members saying farewell to emigrants leaving Ireland. Library of Congress.

Patrick Kennedy (1823–1858)

Patrick was born in Dunganstown, County Wexford, the son of a farmer of modest means. With two older brothers, he had little chance of inheriting the farm. Much of Wexford's land belonged to non-Irish owners, Catholics were harassed by authorities and illiteracy was common, and younger sons like him were generally encouraged to emigrate. The Great Famine added to the pressure. The voyage was risky: an estimated eight to nine thousand Irish emigrants died on the way to the United States. Patrick survived and found work as a barrel maker at a cooperage in Boston. In 1849 he married Bridget Murphy, who had also crossed the Atlantic, and they had five children. Their first son, John, died of cholera, which spread in the crowded housing where immigrants lived, and Patrick himself died of cholera in 1858, leaving Bridget and the rest of the family to fend for themselves.

Patrick Joseph “P.J.” Kennedy (1858–1929)

Patrick Joseph “P.J.” Kennedy, John F. Kennedy's paternal grandfather, circa 1900. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, KFC 2706 (PC 245).

P.J. was raised by his mother alone. Bridget worked to buy a small stationery business and grew it into a successful grocery, which let her son attend Sacred Heart, a private Catholic school in Boston. As a teenager he worked as a stevedore on the Boston waterfront. His rise began in the 1880s when he bought a failing saloon, built it up, bought several more and then moved into liquor distribution. Saloons were the center of Irish Boston's social life, and P.J. lent a sympathetic ear and often money to the poor. Boston offered immigrants few jobs, and anti-Irish feeling among native-born residents grew as the Irish population ballooned, so escaping the immigrant class was hard. His local popularity took him into politics: he was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1886, later served as a state senator and stayed active in state politics until 1895. He was the first in the family to gain recognized standing in American society.

Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. (1888–1969)

Joseph Patrick Kennedy Sr., circa 1914. Underwood & Underwood Studio / John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

With Joe, the family name became linked to political prominence and economic success. He grew up in Boston with more comfort than his father had, attended Boston Latin School and Harvard, became a Massachusetts bank examiner and saved his father's struggling Colombia Trust Company, becoming its president. On October 7, 1914, he married Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald, daughter of Boston Mayor John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald; they began married life at 83 Beals Street in Brookline and raised nine children.

In World War I he became assistant manager at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, which ran around the clock building warships and transports; he later said he never worked harder, and it paid better than being a bank president. He invested in the stock market, secured his wealth before the crash that led to the Great Depression, and went into film production by buying Film Booking Office of America, which earned him five million dollars. After Prohibition he obtained the sole distribution rights to Dewar's Scotch and Gordon's Gin.

Then came politics. A strong supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joe was named the first head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and then the first head of the U.S. Maritime Commission, and from 1938 to late 1940 he served as U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain. Though he fell out of Roosevelt's favor, his fame was set, and he later used his wealth and connections to help his sons John, Robert and Edward “Ted” seek office.

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963)

John was born on May 29, 1917, at 83 Beals Street. His family was comfortable but not yet especially wealthy, and his youth was hard: he was often very ill and nearly died of scarlet fever in 1920, and he had serious health problems all his life. He attended the public Edward Devotion School until part of third grade, then the private Dexter School with his older brother Joe Jr.; the parents wanted the boys among the children of wealthy, connected families to prepare them for America's elite, and “Kennedy” was the only Irish name on the roster. Next came Choate and Harvard, where John earned a bachelor's degree in government with a focus on international affairs. A reader and gifted writer, he published his thesis, Why England Slept, on Britain's delayed response to Nazi aggression; it drew on what he saw while traveling when his father was ambassador, and it proved immensely popular.

He then joined the Navy and got himself sent to the Pacific, where as commander of Patrol Torpedo Boat 109 he rescued his crew after a Japanese destroyer sank the boat and became a decorated war hero. Joe Jr., a Navy pilot in Europe, died in 1944 on a dangerous volunteer mission. Their father had been preparing both sons for office, with the heaviest expectations on Joe Jr., and John took up the family's goal; he already had fame as a writer and war hero.

As president he created the Peace Corps, challenged Americans to be first to the Moon, crafted the Civil Rights Act and signed the Equal Pay Act, and he was the first president to help establish major laws for people with intellectual disabilities. He helped to de-escalate tensions in the Cuban Missile Crisis and began modern televised press conferences. His inaugural address and its line, “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” inspired a generation to public service.

On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Television coverage of the funeral let the nation mourn together, and many people remember where they were when they heard. The article closes that his rise, only a few generations from Ireland's working class, is the American Dream realized in its grandest vision, and that his ancestors' hard work laid the foundation.

Sources

• National Park Service, John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, “A Rise to Prominence: John F. Kennedy's Paternal Lineage” (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/a-rise-to-prominence-john-f-kennedy-s-patriarchal-lineage.htm); the conversion of the film earnings to today's dollars, and three later photographs (a 1931 family photograph, a studio portrait and a White House photograph of the president with his children), are left out; rewritten in hubnx's own words.