August 5, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, before the Kennedies became a household name in American politics, they were two Irish immigrants trying to survive in a city that barely tolerated their presence. Bridget and Patrick Kennedy arrived in Boston after the famine, carrying more grief than belongings, and stepped into a world that saw their faith and their poverty as threats. Author Neil Thompson shares the story of their rise.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people the search for the Our American Stories podcast go
to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.
America's fascination with the Kennedy family has been undimmed for
(00:30):
over six decades. The store of cold hard facts about
their lives and deaths have long ago been exhausted, and
they have given way to reams of speculation. And then,
just when it seemed there were no fresh angles on Camelot,
along comes Neil Thompson's The First Kennedy. Author Neil Thompson's story,
(00:53):
Moonshiner's and the Birth of Nascar told the true story
behind Nascor's hard scrabble moonshine fuel origins. He's back to
share the story from his book The First Kennedys, The
Humble Roots of an American Dynasty. This is the first
book to explore the inspiring story of the poor Irish
refugee couple who escaped famine, created a life together in
(01:16):
a city hostel to the Irish immigrants that came here
and Catholics, and launched the Kennedy dynasty. Here in America.
This is a story of sacrifice and survival, resistance and reinvention.
It's an American story.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
My name is Neil Thompson.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I am the author of The First Kennedys, The Humble
Roots of an American Dynasty, which is my sixth book
of narrative nonfiction. The First Kennedys tells the story of
the Irish immigrant Kennedy's refugees really, who came to America
in the mid eighteen hundreds trying to escape from a
(01:54):
crumbling homeland. It tells the story of Patrick and Bridgick Kennedy,
who left from their respective small poor farms in Southeast
Ireland in Wexford County, and they both escaped roughly eighteen
forty seven into eighteen forty eight fleeing the Great Potato Famine.
The famine was this devastating episode in Irish history where
(02:18):
the potato crops across the entire country died and many
Irish relied heavily on potatoes for most of their diets.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
They were, in.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Most cases tenant farmers who had to grow other crops
and raise farm animals to sell at the market to
pay their English landlords. At the time Ireland was a
colony of England, and so most of the farms across
the country, including those where the early Kennedies came from,
(02:49):
were owned by these absentee English landlords, most of whom
lived elsewhere in England or Scotland or somewhere else. And
then the small tenant farmers had to do what they
could to make enough money to pay the rent on
these farms otherwise face eviction. So when this potato famine hit,
because many of these farms were already in a pretty
(03:11):
precarious position and just barely making it. When the potatoes died,
so did many of the Irish because they relied so
heavily on potatoes for their sustenance.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
When that crop went away.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
They faced this terrible choice of whether to dip into
the crops that they were growing to pay the rent,
or continue to sell those crops and pay the rent
and keep their farm. Otherwise they faced eviction, getting kicked
into the street. And that happened to tens and tens
of thousands of Irish families. And so at that time,
(03:46):
you know, you saw upwards of a million people die
of starvation and disease, and then upwards of two million
people escaping, fleeing the country and trying to escape to
other lands.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
So, in the case of the First.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Kennedys that I write about, they both came from mid
sized families. I mean, these weren't Irish families of ten plus.
There were a handful of brothers and sisters of Patrick
Kennedy and Bridget Murphy Kennedy, who are JFK's John F.
Kennedy's great grandparents. To My story focuses on in the
First Kennedys, So they both became the first in their
(04:25):
respective families to leave the farm and to try to
make their way to America and start a.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
New life for themselves.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
One of the many things I found interesting about this
story was that women, Irish women left in greater numbers
than the men. There was this essentially a wave of
Irish women escaping Ireland coming to America to start over,
and I think it says a lot about not only
those women and sort of the grit and tenacity that
(04:55):
they displayed in making their way, often cases alone, on
these dangers ships to a new land, but it says
a lot too about what life had been like in Ireland.
For them, it was peasant life. You know, Bridget Murphy Kennedy,
again the main character of the first half of this book.
If she had stayed in Ireland, her prospects were dim
(05:16):
no matter what, even without the horrors of the potato famine.
At best, she would have ended up a farm wife
and lived the same way her mother did and her
grandmother did before her, just you know, tending to the
crops and farm animals and raising kids. And I think
for a lot of Irish women, when the potato famine hit,
it kind of offered them a way out, a way
(05:38):
to escape a land that at that time was very
controlled by the Church, and so a lot of women
viewed this as an opportunity to get out and start
a life for themselves, doing their own thing and making
their own money. So Bridget Murphy Kennedy ends up in
(06:00):
settles in Little Island across from downtown Boston known as
East Boston, and starts working as a maid, which is
what many Irish women did at that time.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Her name was Bridget. There were so many Bridgets, it
was the most.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Common name in Ireland at the time, and so many
of them collectively were just known as bridgets. The maids
who worked for these Boston families were just sort of
lumped together as Bridgets or Biddy's or Briedey's, all these
nicknames for Bridget, and so Boston families we would refer
to them as my Bridget or my Biddy, and that
was Bridget Murphy Kennedy, you know, started out at literally
(06:37):
the lowest wrong you could find in the economic ladder
in America at that time.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
And you've been listening to author Neil Thompson tell the
story of the first Kennedy's, the first to come to America,
and how hardship propelled that. The Great Potato Famine of course,
well have killed a million Irish and two million fled
for better prospects elsewhere. But the life even if there
(07:03):
hadn't been a potato famine of a farmer's wife, well
it was drudgery. And this was an opportunity for Bridget
Kennedy and for Patrick to start a new life in
the city of Boston, in this far away place called America.
More of this remarkable story of the first Kennedys, of
the Irish coming to America and America itself here on
(07:26):
our American Stories. Leehbibe here, the host of our American stories.
Every day on this show. We're bringing inspiring stories from
across this great country, stories from our big cities and
small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
(07:48):
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Give a little, give a lot. Go to Alamerican Stories
dot com and give and we continue with our American Stories.
(08:12):
We last left off with Bridget Murphy Kennedy JFK's great grandmother,
leaving Ireland and settling in East Boston, where she began
working as a maid. Let's return to author Neil Thompson.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
She married Patrick Kennedy, who again came from the same
county as her, Wexford County, County Wexford. They married in
eighteen forty nine. He was a barrel maker, someone who
grew up on a farm but kind of made his
own way at a youngish age and developed to learn
to skill for himself. Learned how to make barrels at
(08:49):
a brewery not far from his family farm. So when
Patrick came to America, he had a little bit of
an edge on some of the other men pouring into
like Boston and New York and New Orleans and these
other places where Irish famine escapees were coming to. And
by ending up in this community in East Boston, which
(09:12):
was a very robust shipbuilding community, Patrick Kennedy had a
little bit of a leg up from the other men
who ended up just working digging ditches, building railroads, you know,
hauling cargo on and off ships, you know, just not
getting paid very much. So Patrick did, okay. He and
Bridget get married again eighteen forty nine. They start their family,
(09:34):
but pretty quickly run into the hardships that many immigrant
families at that time and across all time really ran into,
which is poverty and disease and ultimately death. So Patrick
and Bridget lost their first son, John F. Kennedy, who
died in eighteen fifty five of a disease called cholera
(09:55):
and phantom. This just summer sickness that sometimes came from
eating tainted milk, drinking taint tent bilk, or spoiled food
or something. And what's interesting about John F. Kennedy's death,
he was just less than two years old at the time,
is that there was so much hatred for these Irish
(10:17):
Catholic immigrants coming to at Boston Head had enacted laws
that prevented the Irish from burying their dead inside the
city limits. It was only one Catholic cemetery in Boston,
it was known as Saint Augustine, but it was always
full or the city was always closing it for various
alleged health violations, so the Kennedys couldn't even bury their
(10:40):
own son near where they lived. They had to take
two ferries to travel a few miles west to the
town of Cambridge and buried him at the nearest available
Catholic cemetery, miles from their home. So while they buried
their first son, John, they managed to have three other
daughters in the middle eighteen fifties, and then in eighteen
(11:02):
fifty eight, Bridget gave birth to a second son, who
did survive, and his name was PJ. Patrick Joseph, but
they called him PJ. Sadly though, when PJ was ten
months old, his father Patrick got sick. He came down
with tuberculosis, which was common at that time. Many of
the neighborhoods where these Irish immigrants lived, including the Kennedys,
(11:26):
were slums, and often the air and the water was deadly,
you know, full of disease. It was easily transmitted in
these close quarters. So Patrick Kennedy came down with tuberculosis
at the time, it was called consumption. He survived a
few months, and then on November twenty second, eighteen fifty eight,
(11:49):
the same date that John F. Kennedy would later be killed,
Patrick Kennedy died, leaving Bridget alone with four kids, you know,
alone in the slums of these Boston So at the
time when Bridget and Patrick were starting their family, the
prospects were pretty dim for American born kids of Irish immigrants.
(12:09):
In fact, there was a health report at that time
mid eighteen fifties that said the life expectancy of a
first generation kid born of Irish immigrant parents was five years.
In the case of Bridget and Patrick, their firstborn son
didn't even make it that long. Later, when Bridget's daughters
(12:30):
started raising their own families, each of them would lose
nearly half of their children. Upwards of a more than
a dozen of Bridget's grandchildren would die of various diseases
before the age of.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Five or six.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
And at the time that Patrick Kennedy got sick. Another
report that I found said that the expected life span
of an Irish immigrant male in America was fourteen years,
and in Patrick's case, he didn't even make it that long.
He made it in America for about ten years before
(13:07):
being felled by tuberculosis or consumption. So the story of
the first Kennedy's really not only begins with the hardships
that Bridget and Patrick faced, but mainly begins with what
Bridget was up against after losing her husband and having
to sort of start over and rethink her life in
(13:27):
eighteen fifty eight as a widowed immigrant made with four kids.
A few years after Patrick died, she ended up getting
a job as a hairdresser at a department store in
downtown Boston called Jordan Marsh and then, incredibly, within a
couple of years of that, roughly eighteen sixty five, she
was able to open her own little grocery shop in
(13:49):
East Boston at a time when it was extremely rare
for women to open a business of any kind, let
alone a poor, widowed immigrant former maide like Bridget. Among
the reasons that the life expectancy or lifespan for Irish
war men in America was so dismal was you know,
(14:11):
they faced disease, they faced death in the rough jobs
that they were that they had to take on. On
the flip side, the women had better prospects in America,
And in the case of Bridget and others, while they
did start out working as maids and often cases you know,
abused emotionally or sometimes physically by their employers, one thing
(14:34):
that job gave them was exposure to the American middle class.
You know, they saw how well off Boston families lived,
and you know, sort of mentally took notes, you know,
this is how things work here in America. And I
think a lot of women made those observations as they
(14:54):
were working as maids, and then later applied those whatever
lessons they learned from those famis leads to taking on
new jobs and breaking free of the trap of just
working as a servant for others.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
And I think you see that in Bridget's.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Case, where she clearly was always watching, always learning, always
figuring out how to get a little bit ahead, which
is what eventually leads her to being an entrepreneur, to
starting her up her own business and establishing herself as
really a community leader, someone who not only started her
own grocery store and was well known in that community,
(15:32):
but in time was able to buy the building where
her grocery store existed, took out a mortgage, bought that building,
later bought the building next to that, and then turned
all the rooms above the ground floor shops into apartments,
and then she would rent those out to other incoming immigrants,
most of them from Ireland, two of whom became her
(15:53):
sons in law. So she really became this community fixture,
and her grocery store became the hub around which a
lot of the family activities later sort of circled. So
she played this crucial role in the early days and
the ultimate success of the Kennedy family in America, because
(16:13):
without her and none of it would have happened. It
could have easily all came to a screeching halt, as
it did for many poor, struggling Irish immigrant families, especially
those who lost the father at a relatively early stage.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
And what a story you're listening to, the story of
the first Irish to come here to this country. There
was so much hatred for the Irish. We were told
in Boston that there were laws against burying their own
dead where they lived and so the Kennedy family had
to bury their first son, John in a far away
Catholic church is they couldn't do it at home. Dozens
(16:52):
of Bridget's grandchildren died before the age of six. We
forget how far we've come, but the Irish had it,
particularly the average life expectancy of an Irish male was
fourteen years of age in America at the time. But
my goodness, what Bridget's response was as a maid was
to watch what the middle class of Boston were doing,
(17:14):
to learn from them, than to apply those principles to
her own life, opening your own grocery store, becoming a
landlord and a quasi real estate developer. When we come back,
more of the story of the first Kennedy's, the story
of Irish Americans, story of Boston too. Here on our
American stories, and we continue with our American stories and
(18:11):
the story of the first Kennedys. Let's pick up when
we last left off with author Neil Thompson.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
So PJ.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Kennedy born in eighteen fifty eight, who had a rough childhood.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
You know, raised without a father.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
His mother was often busy, first working as a maid,
then later as a hairdresser, and then very busy working
at her grocery store in East Boston, and PJ went
to a few years of school in East Boston, didn't
apparently do very well. He was described as someone who
was a little bit of a follower. He liked to sing,
he liked to goof off. I found evidence that he
(18:49):
spent some time in a juvenile detention center on this
place called Deer Island for truancy, which is what happened
to many of these kids at that time. They were
just picked up off the streets and sent a juvie
for not going to school. But PJ sort of finds
his way over time, I'd argue, largely because of the
influence of his mother, as well as the other women
in his life, you know, being raised without a father
(19:11):
figure or a brother or any uncles around, PJ was
mainly raised by his cousin who came to watch him
when he was a little boy, two aunts who came
to live with Bridget and the family for a while,
and then three older sisters. And so in time he
finds a groove, he settles down. He's less of a troublemaker.
Into his late teens, he worked on the docks of
(19:32):
East Boston as a longshoreman, hauling cargo on and off
the ships coming in and out of that port. Works
for a little while as a brass finisher in a
factory in the East Boston, but then into his early twenties,
discovers sort of the same entrepreneurial chops that his mother
had and decides to open a saloon for himself. The
(19:54):
history of the Kennedys and their relationship with liquor in
America it really starts eighteen forties when Patrick Kennedy gets here.
He was a barrel maker and many of the barrels
he made were for whiskey and beer. And then you
see Bridget in her grocery store selling liquor on the side.
Then you see her son pj. Get into the liquor
business as a saloon keeper and then a retailer, all
(20:17):
of which helped fuel and fund his political career. And
then later you see his son Joe get involved. Although
he's been portrayed as sort of this bootlegger, it really
wasn't the case that he was a bootlegger during the
Prohibition years. He did get involved though, in liquor importing
after Prohibition and made a great success at it, but
(20:37):
you see liquor being an important part of that family's
rise to success. Over the course of fifty sixty or
more years, PJ. PoTA beat up old saloon in South Boston,
paid a couple thousand dollars for it. It seems as
if he probably borrowed money from his mother, who was
finally doing well enough to help her son out. Okay
(21:00):
with that first saloon, later sold that, but bought another
saloon in East Boston, followed by another one, followed by
another one, and really found his groove also behind the bar.
Pj was kind of a quiet presence. He often had
his nose in a book or flipping through the newspaper.
He didn't have much of a formal education or didn't
(21:21):
make the most of it, but later in life seemed
to embrace this desire to learn more about the world
and about the people around him. You know. He wore
wirerim glasses, and he was known as a teetotaler, not
someone like the Irish cliche someone who got drunk on whiskey.
He didn't serve whiskey at the first bar that he opened,
(21:43):
and he was described as someone who only on the
most festive of occasion would allow himself a single glass
of beer. I describe him as a bartender and a
saloon keeper as someone who was really good at listening
to others, trying to understand what people needed, and others
described him at that time and then later in life
(22:05):
as someone who was really concerned for his neighbors and
his community and really went out of his way to
help in any way he could. If someone came into
one of his saloons in need of a meal, he
would help them out. If they needed a couple dollars,
he would make them alone. He was notorious for loaning
money to people and sometimes forgetting to collect it later on.
(22:26):
He was just a generous, empathetic, good soul, good person,
all of which caught the eye of some of the
political leaders in Boston and PJ. Kennedy was part of
that initial wave of upstart Irish Democratic politicians getting elected,
in his case, skipping ahead of local politics and getting
(22:48):
elected in eighteen fifty five to the state Legislature of Massachusetts.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
He served there for seven years.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Was not known as a great campaigner or a great
speech giver, but was known as someone who was really
good at working behind the scenes sort of moving the
levers of political machinery outside the spotlight, helping people find jobs,
helping businesses get started and up and running. He was
very interested in his own industry, which was the liquor industry.
(23:16):
By the time he got started in politics, not only
did he own saloons, but he owned a couple of
retail liquor establishments and a wholesale liquor shop, and was
incredibly successful by the time he was into and then
started to get out of politics. So for PJ, where
he really developed his chops as a politician and a
(23:38):
business leader were community, at his mother's grocery store, at
his saloons, and at the church. Those were sort of
the hubs or around which his success was connected. So
he's not only successful in politics and in business.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
And in the community.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
In time he became really sort of this trusted voice
person that people would go to for advice. He became
head of his own ward in the East Boston. It
was known as Ward two, and so in time he
became known as the Boss of East Boston, the Ward
two Boss. He with a couple of other East Boston politicians,
(24:17):
started his own bank. Later he got involved in a
cold business. He got involved in real estate, buying and
selling properties.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
But what I find interesting, among many.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Other aspects of Pj's rise to success, is that he
was involved in a lot of businesses that could have
gotten him in trouble and did get many other politicians
in trouble at that time, But he always kept his
nose clean. He always was very careful to not cross
the line, never accused of graft, never accused of bribery,
(24:50):
while at that time many of his contemporaries were crossing
the line. They felt like they were going to fight
for their lives trying to break into politics at that time,
and they would do whatever it took to either get elected,
or get a friend elected, or once they were elected,
help a friend get a job in city government somehow.
And PJ was alongside and surrounded by all of that,
(25:13):
but always kept his nose clean even as he became
incredibly successful and incredibly influential.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
In time, PJ.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Becomes a member of this initially secretive organization called the
Board of Strategy. This was a small group of politicians
who met at the Quincy Hotel in downtown Boston and
together would decide which politicians they were going to get
behind for upcoming elections, which person was the best candidate
(25:45):
for some city job, an appointed job, or an elected position.
So they became really the movers and shakers of Boston,
as the Irish political machinery literally took over that city.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
And you've been listening to author Neil Thompson's remarkable story
of the First Kennedys and how a city that was
once hostile to the Irish soon was led by the Irish.
And it was entrepreneurship. It was a study of human
nature and in the end delivering services to their people.
And in the end he made a study of finding
(26:21):
jobs for the Irish and of course helping the Irish
start businesses.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
This is an.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Entrepreneurial family all the way through. And his own mother
taught him that the liquor business not a surprise that
it plays a seminal part in this family. But how
far back it went, Well, f you knew, I certainly didn't.
And I've read a lot about the Kennedys, the story
of the Irish in America, the story of Boston, the
(26:47):
story of the First Kennedys, and so much more. Here
with author Neil Thompson on our American stories. Can we
(27:37):
continue with our American stories and author Neil Thompson and
his book The First Kennedy's The Humble Roots of an
American Dynasty. When we last left off, p J. Kennedy
has become one of the most powerful among the movers
and shakers in Boston as the Irish political machinery took
over the city. Let's return to Neil with the of
(28:00):
the story.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
PJ got married in eighteen eighty seven. He had already
had a few years of success in the Massachusetts State
legislature and then met and married a woman named Mary
Augusta Hickey. They married and had a firstborn son, Joe.
He was named Joe because Mary decided she didn't want,
as she put it, another Patrick or another PJ running
(28:23):
around this house. She wanted a son who had a
more American name, who represented more of their her desire
to assimilate into America and not remain old school Irish.
And this is a trait that Joe himself picked up
later on. I argue in the book that PJ. Maintained
an interest in his Irish heritage. He visited Ireland a
(28:47):
number of times and sort of cared about that part
of his backstory. Joe, on the other hand, maybe influenced
by his mother Mary, decided he didn't want to be
Irish American. He didn't want to be hyphenated. He wanted
to be American. And he would tell his kids the
same thing later, when he and Rose started raising their
own family, he said, we're Americans now.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
I was born here. I'm an American.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
He sometimes got frustrated with the being tagged as Irish
American and would say, you know, what does it take
to be an American in this country?
Speaker 2 (29:18):
I was born here.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
In terms of Pj's generosity with others, lending money to others,
sometimes collecting that money back and sometimes not in time,
that became a frustration for his son Joe, who felt
like his father was too generous, giving away too much
of the family the family funds, and I think it's
among the reasons that Joe Kennedy didn't get involved in
elected politics himself.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
He saw his father as.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Someone who was kind of at the back and call
of his constituents at all hours. Joe would later describe
being at the dinner table and someone would knock at
the door looking for PJ. For whatever it was, help
with a job alone help help with something happening down
at city Hall, and Joe bristled against that and bristled
(30:04):
against his father's generosity. In fact, a family friend would
later describe the differences between PJ and his son Joe
like this, Joe inherited his father's business acumen, but not
his soul. You know, Joe, if he gave anything away,
he expected something back. And in Pj's case, he gave
and often willingly forgave that debt. There was a family
(30:28):
friend who later described PJ as giving away half of
his fortune during his day just because he didn't go
out of his way to collect debts from people who
he knew struggled to pay those debts back.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
He really cared, he.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Really gave, had this profound empathy for those who needed help.
So I think PJ cared about what he was doing
and cared about people, and Joe was known as caring
about getting rich and getting powerful and getting his sons
elected to higher office.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
That was his goal in life.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
So interestingly, there were two very different men. But I
argue in the book that some of the sensibilities you
see in PJ, maybe they skip over Joe, but that
you do see them get picked up in Joe and
Rose's children who were raised.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
To serve The first Irish Catholic mayor of Boston.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
His name was Hugh O'Neill, was elected in eighteen eighty five,
just a year before PJ got into politics. That was
the start of this rise of Irish democratic politicians in Boston.
But within ten fifteen years you see the Irish completely
take over that city. Today we think of Boston as
(31:42):
primarily Irish and democratic city, and it is at that
time they were fighting to make that happen. And PJ
was part of that initial wave of politicians who really
broke through and then within a relatively short time kind
of owned and ran that city and ran it. It
was run by and for the Irish. One of pj's
(32:03):
peers contemporaries at that time was John F. Fitzgerald, who
was JFK's other grandfather. Their relationship is a fascinating one
to me because they were together, you know, again, part
of this first wave of Irish democratic politicians. Very similar backgrounds.
Sons of Irish immigrant grossers came up learning the liquor
(32:25):
trades from their parents.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Both lost their fathers at a relatively.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Young age and Pj's case at a very young age,
you know, and also grew up in a city that
really didn't want their kind. And then they both get
into politics roughly the same time. They became friends and
at times votes. They were both at one point members
of this board of strategy organization. At times PJ would
(32:49):
vote against things that Fitzgerald wanted and vice versa. So
I find their relationship to be a fascinating one, in
particular because their children, pj's first born son Joe, and
John Fitzgerald's daughter Rose, meet where the families were vacationing
up in Maine at a relatively young age. A few
(33:12):
years later, they're a little bit older and they start
flirting with each other. Then their parents realize that something's
going on there and try and keep them apart. They
didn't want their children to marry one another, and in
time Rose and Joe did find each other and eventually
get married nineteen fourteen, bringing those two families together and
together giving us the family that we know of today
(33:33):
as the twentieth century. Kennedy's you know, JFK, Bobby Kennedy
and the rest. One of the reasons that I chose
to dig way back into the Kennedy history and try
and understand a little bit better where they came from
and why, and who the early Kennedys in America were
(33:56):
and what life was like for them. It was also,
in a hand away, an effort to understand my own
Irish heritage. In the book, I described the immigrant Kennedys
Bridget and Patrick in my family. On my mother's side,
my grandparents were Bridget and Patrick, who came from Ireland
and settled in New York in the nineteen twenties, similar
(34:19):
to the Kennedy family. My grandfather Patrick died in his
mid thirties in his case of cancer, leaving his wife
Bridget alone with three kids in public housing in New Jersey.
So these echoes between how my family started in America
and how the Kennedys started, It's partly what drew me
to this story in the first place, and partly what
(34:41):
drove some of my efforts to envision what life was
like for the Kennedys across those early days, because I
know there were some similarities to how life was like
for my widowed immigrant grandmother during her early days in America.
In fact, my grandmother when she got to America worked
as a maid, as Bridget Murphy Kennedy did, although in
(35:03):
my grandmother's case, because maids were so because the name
Bridget was so affiliated with work as a domestic servant,
she changed her name when she got to America and
was later known as Della instead of Bridget. She didn't
want to be known as the stereotypical Irish Bridget made
so I think my hope in exploring this piece of
(35:27):
the Kennedy story was to not only bring to life
some of these characters who have been, in my view,
kind of either overlooked or forgotten, especially Bridget Murphy Kennedy,
who I think is really played an important and heroic
role in the early success of that family and doesn't
(35:48):
get as much credit as she deserves. But my hope
also was to show how the Kennedy's who. You know,
it's a family we think of as being powerful and
successful and you know, flawed in a lot of ways
depending on how you view them. I certainly view members
of that family as being extremely flawed, but certainly successful
(36:09):
and wealthy and stylish, and you know, they were celebrities,
many of them. But I find it remarkable that despite
all that they started, like a lot of immigrant families do, poor,
living in the slums, struggling to break out of the
slums and to make something for themselves. So really it's
an immigrant success story, and we don't really think of
(36:30):
the Kennedys as being a family that started with nothing,
that started poor, that started as a class of people
who were discriminated against, as a class of people who
laws were made to try and prevent them from succeeding.
So my hope in telling their story, the backstory of
the Kennedys, kind of the origin story of the Kennedys,
is to remind us that we really are a nation
(36:53):
of immigrants. But I think the Kennedy saga is proof
that we are a nation of immigrants if we have
the right rules in place, laws in place, and we
allow people who come here aspiring to start a new
life for themselves, allow them to succeed the way the
Kennedys ultimately did.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hangler
and a remarkable piece of storytelling by author Neil Thompson,
The First Kennedys, The Humble Roots of an American Dynasty.
Get it at your local bookstore or get it online
at the usual suspects. And what a story. Starting as
Irish tenant farmers in southeastern part of that country, the
(37:33):
potato famine strikes, one million die, two million flee, and
what a story about overcoming obstacles laws. The Kennedys couldn't
even bury their first dead son in Boston is there
were laws that prohibited it. What did the Irish do?
What was their rebuttal? Not long after, the Irish were
running that city, As Neil Thompson said, it was run
(37:56):
by and for the Irish. The story of the Irish
Americans in Boston, the story of the Kennedy family, and
so much more here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people the search for the Our American Stories podcast go
to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.
America's fascination with the Kennedy family has been undimmed for
(00:30):
over six decades. The store of cold hard facts about
their lives and deaths have long ago been exhausted, and
they have given way to reams of speculation. And then,
just when it seemed there were no fresh angles on Camelot,
along comes Neil Thompson's The First Kennedy. Author Neil Thompson's story,
(00:53):
Moonshiner's and the Birth of Nascar told the true story
behind Nascor's hard scrabble moonshine fuel origins. He's back to
share the story from his book The First Kennedys, The
Humble Roots of an American Dynasty. This is the first
book to explore the inspiring story of the poor Irish
refugee couple who escaped famine, created a life together in
(01:16):
a city hostel to the Irish immigrants that came here
and Catholics, and launched the Kennedy dynasty. Here in America.
This is a story of sacrifice and survival, resistance and reinvention.
It's an American story.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
My name is Neil Thompson.
Speaker 3 (01:33):
I am the author of The First Kennedys, The Humble
Roots of an American Dynasty, which is my sixth book
of narrative nonfiction. The First Kennedys tells the story of
the Irish immigrant Kennedy's refugees really, who came to America
in the mid eighteen hundreds trying to escape from a
(01:54):
crumbling homeland. It tells the story of Patrick and Bridgick Kennedy,
who left from their respective small poor farms in Southeast
Ireland in Wexford County, and they both escaped roughly eighteen
forty seven into eighteen forty eight fleeing the Great Potato Famine.
The famine was this devastating episode in Irish history where
(02:18):
the potato crops across the entire country died and many
Irish relied heavily on potatoes for most of their diets.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
They were, in.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Most cases tenant farmers who had to grow other crops
and raise farm animals to sell at the market to
pay their English landlords. At the time Ireland was a
colony of England, and so most of the farms across
the country, including those where the early Kennedies came from,
(02:49):
were owned by these absentee English landlords, most of whom
lived elsewhere in England or Scotland or somewhere else. And
then the small tenant farmers had to do what they
could to make enough money to pay the rent on
these farms otherwise face eviction. So when this potato famine hit,
because many of these farms were already in a pretty
(03:11):
precarious position and just barely making it. When the potatoes died,
so did many of the Irish because they relied so
heavily on potatoes for their sustenance.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
When that crop went away.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
They faced this terrible choice of whether to dip into
the crops that they were growing to pay the rent,
or continue to sell those crops and pay the rent
and keep their farm. Otherwise they faced eviction, getting kicked
into the street. And that happened to tens and tens
of thousands of Irish families. And so at that time,
(03:46):
you know, you saw upwards of a million people die
of starvation and disease, and then upwards of two million
people escaping, fleeing the country and trying to escape to
other lands.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
So, in the case of the First.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Kennedys that I write about, they both came from mid
sized families. I mean, these weren't Irish families of ten plus.
There were a handful of brothers and sisters of Patrick
Kennedy and Bridget Murphy Kennedy, who are JFK's John F.
Kennedy's great grandparents. To My story focuses on in the
First Kennedys, So they both became the first in their
(04:25):
respective families to leave the farm and to try to
make their way to America and start a.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
New life for themselves.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
One of the many things I found interesting about this
story was that women, Irish women left in greater numbers
than the men. There was this essentially a wave of
Irish women escaping Ireland coming to America to start over,
and I think it says a lot about not only
those women and sort of the grit and tenacity that
(04:55):
they displayed in making their way, often cases alone, on
these dangers ships to a new land, but it says
a lot too about what life had been like in Ireland.
For them, it was peasant life. You know, Bridget Murphy Kennedy,
again the main character of the first half of this book.
If she had stayed in Ireland, her prospects were dim
(05:16):
no matter what, even without the horrors of the potato famine.
At best, she would have ended up a farm wife
and lived the same way her mother did and her
grandmother did before her, just you know, tending to the
crops and farm animals and raising kids. And I think
for a lot of Irish women, when the potato famine hit,
it kind of offered them a way out, a way
(05:38):
to escape a land that at that time was very
controlled by the Church, and so a lot of women
viewed this as an opportunity to get out and start
a life for themselves, doing their own thing and making
their own money. So Bridget Murphy Kennedy ends up in
(06:00):
settles in Little Island across from downtown Boston known as
East Boston, and starts working as a maid, which is
what many Irish women did at that time.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Her name was Bridget. There were so many Bridgets, it
was the most.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
Common name in Ireland at the time, and so many
of them collectively were just known as bridgets. The maids
who worked for these Boston families were just sort of
lumped together as Bridgets or Biddy's or Briedey's, all these
nicknames for Bridget, and so Boston families we would refer
to them as my Bridget or my Biddy, and that
was Bridget Murphy Kennedy, you know, started out at literally
(06:37):
the lowest wrong you could find in the economic ladder
in America at that time.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
And you've been listening to author Neil Thompson tell the
story of the first Kennedy's, the first to come to America,
and how hardship propelled that. The Great Potato Famine of course,
well have killed a million Irish and two million fled
for better prospects elsewhere. But the life even if there
(07:03):
hadn't been a potato famine of a farmer's wife, well
it was drudgery. And this was an opportunity for Bridget
Kennedy and for Patrick to start a new life in
the city of Boston, in this far away place called America.
More of this remarkable story of the first Kennedys, of
the Irish coming to America and America itself here on
(07:26):
our American Stories. Leehbibe here, the host of our American stories.
Every day on this show. We're bringing inspiring stories from
across this great country, stories from our big cities and
small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you.
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
(07:48):
free to make. If you love what you hear, go
to Alamerican Stories dot com and click the donate button.
Give a little, give a lot. Go to Alamerican Stories
dot com and give and we continue with our American Stories.
(08:12):
We last left off with Bridget Murphy Kennedy JFK's great grandmother,
leaving Ireland and settling in East Boston, where she began
working as a maid. Let's return to author Neil Thompson.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
She married Patrick Kennedy, who again came from the same
county as her, Wexford County, County Wexford. They married in
eighteen forty nine. He was a barrel maker, someone who
grew up on a farm but kind of made his
own way at a youngish age and developed to learn
to skill for himself. Learned how to make barrels at
(08:49):
a brewery not far from his family farm. So when
Patrick came to America, he had a little bit of
an edge on some of the other men pouring into
like Boston and New York and New Orleans and these
other places where Irish famine escapees were coming to. And
by ending up in this community in East Boston, which
(09:12):
was a very robust shipbuilding community, Patrick Kennedy had a
little bit of a leg up from the other men
who ended up just working digging ditches, building railroads, you know,
hauling cargo on and off ships, you know, just not
getting paid very much. So Patrick did, okay. He and
Bridget get married again eighteen forty nine. They start their family,
(09:34):
but pretty quickly run into the hardships that many immigrant
families at that time and across all time really ran into,
which is poverty and disease and ultimately death. So Patrick
and Bridget lost their first son, John F. Kennedy, who
died in eighteen fifty five of a disease called cholera
(09:55):
and phantom. This just summer sickness that sometimes came from
eating tainted milk, drinking taint tent bilk, or spoiled food
or something. And what's interesting about John F. Kennedy's death,
he was just less than two years old at the time,
is that there was so much hatred for these Irish
(10:17):
Catholic immigrants coming to at Boston Head had enacted laws
that prevented the Irish from burying their dead inside the
city limits. It was only one Catholic cemetery in Boston,
it was known as Saint Augustine, but it was always
full or the city was always closing it for various
alleged health violations, so the Kennedys couldn't even bury their
(10:40):
own son near where they lived. They had to take
two ferries to travel a few miles west to the
town of Cambridge and buried him at the nearest available
Catholic cemetery, miles from their home. So while they buried
their first son, John, they managed to have three other
daughters in the middle eighteen fifties, and then in eighteen
(11:02):
fifty eight, Bridget gave birth to a second son, who
did survive, and his name was PJ. Patrick Joseph, but
they called him PJ. Sadly though, when PJ was ten
months old, his father Patrick got sick. He came down
with tuberculosis, which was common at that time. Many of
the neighborhoods where these Irish immigrants lived, including the Kennedys,
(11:26):
were slums, and often the air and the water was deadly,
you know, full of disease. It was easily transmitted in
these close quarters. So Patrick Kennedy came down with tuberculosis
at the time, it was called consumption. He survived a
few months, and then on November twenty second, eighteen fifty eight,
(11:49):
the same date that John F. Kennedy would later be killed,
Patrick Kennedy died, leaving Bridget alone with four kids, you know,
alone in the slums of these Boston So at the
time when Bridget and Patrick were starting their family, the
prospects were pretty dim for American born kids of Irish immigrants.
(12:09):
In fact, there was a health report at that time
mid eighteen fifties that said the life expectancy of a
first generation kid born of Irish immigrant parents was five years.
In the case of Bridget and Patrick, their firstborn son
didn't even make it that long. Later, when Bridget's daughters
(12:30):
started raising their own families, each of them would lose
nearly half of their children. Upwards of a more than
a dozen of Bridget's grandchildren would die of various diseases
before the age of.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Five or six.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
And at the time that Patrick Kennedy got sick. Another
report that I found said that the expected life span
of an Irish immigrant male in America was fourteen years,
and in Patrick's case, he didn't even make it that long.
He made it in America for about ten years before
(13:07):
being felled by tuberculosis or consumption. So the story of
the first Kennedy's really not only begins with the hardships
that Bridget and Patrick faced, but mainly begins with what
Bridget was up against after losing her husband and having
to sort of start over and rethink her life in
(13:27):
eighteen fifty eight as a widowed immigrant made with four kids.
A few years after Patrick died, she ended up getting
a job as a hairdresser at a department store in
downtown Boston called Jordan Marsh and then, incredibly, within a
couple of years of that, roughly eighteen sixty five, she
was able to open her own little grocery shop in
(13:49):
East Boston at a time when it was extremely rare
for women to open a business of any kind, let
alone a poor, widowed immigrant former maide like Bridget. Among
the reasons that the life expectancy or lifespan for Irish
war men in America was so dismal was you know,
(14:11):
they faced disease, they faced death in the rough jobs
that they were that they had to take on. On
the flip side, the women had better prospects in America,
And in the case of Bridget and others, while they
did start out working as maids and often cases you know,
abused emotionally or sometimes physically by their employers, one thing
(14:34):
that job gave them was exposure to the American middle class.
You know, they saw how well off Boston families lived,
and you know, sort of mentally took notes, you know,
this is how things work here in America. And I
think a lot of women made those observations as they
(14:54):
were working as maids, and then later applied those whatever
lessons they learned from those famis leads to taking on
new jobs and breaking free of the trap of just
working as a servant for others.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
And I think you see that in Bridget's.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Case, where she clearly was always watching, always learning, always
figuring out how to get a little bit ahead, which
is what eventually leads her to being an entrepreneur, to
starting her up her own business and establishing herself as
really a community leader, someone who not only started her
own grocery store and was well known in that community,
(15:32):
but in time was able to buy the building where
her grocery store existed, took out a mortgage, bought that building,
later bought the building next to that, and then turned
all the rooms above the ground floor shops into apartments,
and then she would rent those out to other incoming immigrants,
most of them from Ireland, two of whom became her
(15:53):
sons in law. So she really became this community fixture,
and her grocery store became the hub around which a
lot of the family activities later sort of circled. So
she played this crucial role in the early days and
the ultimate success of the Kennedy family in America, because
(16:13):
without her and none of it would have happened. It
could have easily all came to a screeching halt, as
it did for many poor, struggling Irish immigrant families, especially
those who lost the father at a relatively early stage.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
And what a story you're listening to, the story of
the first Irish to come here to this country. There
was so much hatred for the Irish. We were told
in Boston that there were laws against burying their own
dead where they lived and so the Kennedy family had
to bury their first son, John in a far away
Catholic church is they couldn't do it at home. Dozens
(16:52):
of Bridget's grandchildren died before the age of six. We
forget how far we've come, but the Irish had it,
particularly the average life expectancy of an Irish male was
fourteen years of age in America at the time. But
my goodness, what Bridget's response was as a maid was
to watch what the middle class of Boston were doing,
(17:14):
to learn from them, than to apply those principles to
her own life, opening your own grocery store, becoming a
landlord and a quasi real estate developer. When we come back,
more of the story of the first Kennedy's, the story
of Irish Americans, story of Boston too. Here on our
American stories, and we continue with our American stories and
(18:11):
the story of the first Kennedys. Let's pick up when
we last left off with author Neil Thompson.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
So PJ.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Kennedy born in eighteen fifty eight, who had a rough childhood.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
You know, raised without a father.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
His mother was often busy, first working as a maid,
then later as a hairdresser, and then very busy working
at her grocery store in East Boston, and PJ went
to a few years of school in East Boston, didn't
apparently do very well. He was described as someone who
was a little bit of a follower. He liked to sing,
he liked to goof off. I found evidence that he
(18:49):
spent some time in a juvenile detention center on this
place called Deer Island for truancy, which is what happened
to many of these kids at that time. They were
just picked up off the streets and sent a juvie
for not going to school. But PJ sort of finds
his way over time, I'd argue, largely because of the
influence of his mother, as well as the other women
in his life, you know, being raised without a father
(19:11):
figure or a brother or any uncles around, PJ was
mainly raised by his cousin who came to watch him
when he was a little boy, two aunts who came
to live with Bridget and the family for a while,
and then three older sisters. And so in time he
finds a groove, he settles down. He's less of a troublemaker.
Into his late teens, he worked on the docks of
(19:32):
East Boston as a longshoreman, hauling cargo on and off
the ships coming in and out of that port. Works
for a little while as a brass finisher in a
factory in the East Boston, but then into his early twenties,
discovers sort of the same entrepreneurial chops that his mother
had and decides to open a saloon for himself. The
(19:54):
history of the Kennedys and their relationship with liquor in
America it really starts eighteen forties when Patrick Kennedy gets here.
He was a barrel maker and many of the barrels
he made were for whiskey and beer. And then you
see Bridget in her grocery store selling liquor on the side.
Then you see her son pj. Get into the liquor
business as a saloon keeper and then a retailer, all
(20:17):
of which helped fuel and fund his political career. And
then later you see his son Joe get involved. Although
he's been portrayed as sort of this bootlegger, it really
wasn't the case that he was a bootlegger during the
Prohibition years. He did get involved though, in liquor importing
after Prohibition and made a great success at it, but
(20:37):
you see liquor being an important part of that family's
rise to success. Over the course of fifty sixty or
more years, PJ. PoTA beat up old saloon in South Boston,
paid a couple thousand dollars for it. It seems as
if he probably borrowed money from his mother, who was
finally doing well enough to help her son out. Okay
(21:00):
with that first saloon, later sold that, but bought another
saloon in East Boston, followed by another one, followed by
another one, and really found his groove also behind the bar.
Pj was kind of a quiet presence. He often had
his nose in a book or flipping through the newspaper.
He didn't have much of a formal education or didn't
(21:21):
make the most of it, but later in life seemed
to embrace this desire to learn more about the world
and about the people around him. You know. He wore
wirerim glasses, and he was known as a teetotaler, not
someone like the Irish cliche someone who got drunk on whiskey.
He didn't serve whiskey at the first bar that he opened,
(21:43):
and he was described as someone who only on the
most festive of occasion would allow himself a single glass
of beer. I describe him as a bartender and a
saloon keeper as someone who was really good at listening
to others, trying to understand what people needed, and others
described him at that time and then later in life
(22:05):
as someone who was really concerned for his neighbors and
his community and really went out of his way to
help in any way he could. If someone came into
one of his saloons in need of a meal, he
would help them out. If they needed a couple dollars,
he would make them alone. He was notorious for loaning
money to people and sometimes forgetting to collect it later on.
(22:26):
He was just a generous, empathetic, good soul, good person,
all of which caught the eye of some of the
political leaders in Boston and PJ. Kennedy was part of
that initial wave of upstart Irish Democratic politicians getting elected,
in his case, skipping ahead of local politics and getting
(22:48):
elected in eighteen fifty five to the state Legislature of Massachusetts.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
He served there for seven years.
Speaker 3 (22:55):
Was not known as a great campaigner or a great
speech giver, but was known as someone who was really
good at working behind the scenes sort of moving the
levers of political machinery outside the spotlight, helping people find jobs,
helping businesses get started and up and running. He was
very interested in his own industry, which was the liquor industry.
(23:16):
By the time he got started in politics, not only
did he own saloons, but he owned a couple of
retail liquor establishments and a wholesale liquor shop, and was
incredibly successful by the time he was into and then
started to get out of politics. So for PJ, where
he really developed his chops as a politician and a
(23:38):
business leader were community, at his mother's grocery store, at
his saloons, and at the church. Those were sort of
the hubs or around which his success was connected. So
he's not only successful in politics and in business.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
And in the community.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
In time he became really sort of this trusted voice
person that people would go to for advice. He became
head of his own ward in the East Boston. It
was known as Ward two, and so in time he
became known as the Boss of East Boston, the Ward
two Boss. He with a couple of other East Boston politicians,
(24:17):
started his own bank. Later he got involved in a
cold business. He got involved in real estate, buying and
selling properties.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
But what I find interesting, among many.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Other aspects of Pj's rise to success, is that he
was involved in a lot of businesses that could have
gotten him in trouble and did get many other politicians
in trouble at that time, But he always kept his
nose clean. He always was very careful to not cross
the line, never accused of graft, never accused of bribery,
(24:50):
while at that time many of his contemporaries were crossing
the line. They felt like they were going to fight
for their lives trying to break into politics at that time,
and they would do whatever it took to either get elected,
or get a friend elected, or once they were elected,
help a friend get a job in city government somehow.
And PJ was alongside and surrounded by all of that,
(25:13):
but always kept his nose clean even as he became
incredibly successful and incredibly influential.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
In time, PJ.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Becomes a member of this initially secretive organization called the
Board of Strategy. This was a small group of politicians
who met at the Quincy Hotel in downtown Boston and
together would decide which politicians they were going to get
behind for upcoming elections, which person was the best candidate
(25:45):
for some city job, an appointed job, or an elected position.
So they became really the movers and shakers of Boston,
as the Irish political machinery literally took over that city.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
And you've been listening to author Neil Thompson's remarkable story
of the First Kennedys and how a city that was
once hostile to the Irish soon was led by the Irish.
And it was entrepreneurship. It was a study of human
nature and in the end delivering services to their people.
And in the end he made a study of finding
(26:21):
jobs for the Irish and of course helping the Irish
start businesses.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
This is an.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Entrepreneurial family all the way through. And his own mother
taught him that the liquor business not a surprise that
it plays a seminal part in this family. But how
far back it went, Well, f you knew, I certainly didn't.
And I've read a lot about the Kennedys, the story
of the Irish in America, the story of Boston, the
(26:47):
story of the First Kennedys, and so much more. Here
with author Neil Thompson on our American stories. Can we
(27:37):
continue with our American stories and author Neil Thompson and
his book The First Kennedy's The Humble Roots of an
American Dynasty. When we last left off, p J. Kennedy
has become one of the most powerful among the movers
and shakers in Boston as the Irish political machinery took
over the city. Let's return to Neil with the of
(28:00):
the story.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
PJ got married in eighteen eighty seven. He had already
had a few years of success in the Massachusetts State
legislature and then met and married a woman named Mary
Augusta Hickey. They married and had a firstborn son, Joe.
He was named Joe because Mary decided she didn't want,
as she put it, another Patrick or another PJ running
(28:23):
around this house. She wanted a son who had a
more American name, who represented more of their her desire
to assimilate into America and not remain old school Irish.
And this is a trait that Joe himself picked up
later on. I argue in the book that PJ. Maintained
an interest in his Irish heritage. He visited Ireland a
(28:47):
number of times and sort of cared about that part
of his backstory. Joe, on the other hand, maybe influenced
by his mother Mary, decided he didn't want to be
Irish American. He didn't want to be hyphenated. He wanted
to be American. And he would tell his kids the
same thing later, when he and Rose started raising their
own family, he said, we're Americans now.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
I was born here. I'm an American.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
He sometimes got frustrated with the being tagged as Irish
American and would say, you know, what does it take
to be an American in this country?
Speaker 2 (29:18):
I was born here.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
In terms of Pj's generosity with others, lending money to others,
sometimes collecting that money back and sometimes not in time,
that became a frustration for his son Joe, who felt
like his father was too generous, giving away too much
of the family the family funds, and I think it's
among the reasons that Joe Kennedy didn't get involved in
elected politics himself.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
He saw his father as.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Someone who was kind of at the back and call
of his constituents at all hours. Joe would later describe
being at the dinner table and someone would knock at
the door looking for PJ. For whatever it was, help
with a job alone help help with something happening down
at city Hall, and Joe bristled against that and bristled
(30:04):
against his father's generosity. In fact, a family friend would
later describe the differences between PJ and his son Joe
like this, Joe inherited his father's business acumen, but not
his soul. You know, Joe, if he gave anything away,
he expected something back. And in Pj's case, he gave
and often willingly forgave that debt. There was a family
(30:28):
friend who later described PJ as giving away half of
his fortune during his day just because he didn't go
out of his way to collect debts from people who
he knew struggled to pay those debts back.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
He really cared, he.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Really gave, had this profound empathy for those who needed help.
So I think PJ cared about what he was doing
and cared about people, and Joe was known as caring
about getting rich and getting powerful and getting his sons
elected to higher office.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
That was his goal in life.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
So interestingly, there were two very different men. But I
argue in the book that some of the sensibilities you
see in PJ, maybe they skip over Joe, but that
you do see them get picked up in Joe and
Rose's children who were raised.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
To serve The first Irish Catholic mayor of Boston.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
His name was Hugh O'Neill, was elected in eighteen eighty five,
just a year before PJ got into politics. That was
the start of this rise of Irish democratic politicians in Boston.
But within ten fifteen years you see the Irish completely
take over that city. Today we think of Boston as
(31:42):
primarily Irish and democratic city, and it is at that
time they were fighting to make that happen. And PJ
was part of that initial wave of politicians who really
broke through and then within a relatively short time kind
of owned and ran that city and ran it. It
was run by and for the Irish. One of pj's
(32:03):
peers contemporaries at that time was John F. Fitzgerald, who
was JFK's other grandfather. Their relationship is a fascinating one
to me because they were together, you know, again, part
of this first wave of Irish democratic politicians. Very similar backgrounds.
Sons of Irish immigrant grossers came up learning the liquor
(32:25):
trades from their parents.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
Both lost their fathers at a relatively.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
Young age and Pj's case at a very young age,
you know, and also grew up in a city that
really didn't want their kind. And then they both get
into politics roughly the same time. They became friends and
at times votes. They were both at one point members
of this board of strategy organization. At times PJ would
(32:49):
vote against things that Fitzgerald wanted and vice versa. So
I find their relationship to be a fascinating one, in
particular because their children, pj's first born son Joe, and
John Fitzgerald's daughter Rose, meet where the families were vacationing
up in Maine at a relatively young age. A few
(33:12):
years later, they're a little bit older and they start
flirting with each other. Then their parents realize that something's
going on there and try and keep them apart. They
didn't want their children to marry one another, and in
time Rose and Joe did find each other and eventually
get married nineteen fourteen, bringing those two families together and
together giving us the family that we know of today
(33:33):
as the twentieth century. Kennedy's you know, JFK, Bobby Kennedy
and the rest. One of the reasons that I chose
to dig way back into the Kennedy history and try
and understand a little bit better where they came from
and why, and who the early Kennedys in America were
(33:56):
and what life was like for them. It was also,
in a hand away, an effort to understand my own
Irish heritage. In the book, I described the immigrant Kennedys
Bridget and Patrick in my family. On my mother's side,
my grandparents were Bridget and Patrick, who came from Ireland
and settled in New York in the nineteen twenties, similar
(34:19):
to the Kennedy family. My grandfather Patrick died in his
mid thirties in his case of cancer, leaving his wife
Bridget alone with three kids in public housing in New Jersey.
So these echoes between how my family started in America
and how the Kennedys started, It's partly what drew me
to this story in the first place, and partly what
(34:41):
drove some of my efforts to envision what life was
like for the Kennedys across those early days, because I
know there were some similarities to how life was like
for my widowed immigrant grandmother during her early days in America.
In fact, my grandmother when she got to America worked
as a maid, as Bridget Murphy Kennedy did, although in
(35:03):
my grandmother's case, because maids were so because the name
Bridget was so affiliated with work as a domestic servant,
she changed her name when she got to America and
was later known as Della instead of Bridget. She didn't
want to be known as the stereotypical Irish Bridget made
so I think my hope in exploring this piece of
(35:27):
the Kennedy story was to not only bring to life
some of these characters who have been, in my view,
kind of either overlooked or forgotten, especially Bridget Murphy Kennedy,
who I think is really played an important and heroic
role in the early success of that family and doesn't
(35:48):
get as much credit as she deserves. But my hope
also was to show how the Kennedy's who. You know,
it's a family we think of as being powerful and
successful and you know, flawed in a lot of ways
depending on how you view them. I certainly view members
of that family as being extremely flawed, but certainly successful
(36:09):
and wealthy and stylish, and you know, they were celebrities,
many of them. But I find it remarkable that despite
all that they started, like a lot of immigrant families do, poor,
living in the slums, struggling to break out of the
slums and to make something for themselves. So really it's
an immigrant success story, and we don't really think of
(36:30):
the Kennedys as being a family that started with nothing,
that started poor, that started as a class of people
who were discriminated against, as a class of people who
laws were made to try and prevent them from succeeding.
So my hope in telling their story, the backstory of
the Kennedys, kind of the origin story of the Kennedys,
is to remind us that we really are a nation
(36:53):
of immigrants. But I think the Kennedy saga is proof
that we are a nation of immigrants if we have
the right rules in place, laws in place, and we
allow people who come here aspiring to start a new
life for themselves, allow them to succeed the way the
Kennedys ultimately did.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hangler
and a remarkable piece of storytelling by author Neil Thompson,
The First Kennedys, The Humble Roots of an American Dynasty.
Get it at your local bookstore or get it online
at the usual suspects. And what a story. Starting as
Irish tenant farmers in southeastern part of that country, the
(37:33):
potato famine strikes, one million die, two million flee, and
what a story about overcoming obstacles laws. The Kennedys couldn't
even bury their first dead son in Boston is there
were laws that prohibited it. What did the Irish do?
What was their rebuttal? Not long after, the Irish were
running that city, As Neil Thompson said, it was run
(37:56):
by and for the Irish. The story of the Irish
Americans in Boston, the story of the Kennedy family, and
so much more here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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