P. J. Kennedy

Patrick Joseph Kennedy (January 14, 1858 – May 18, 1929) was an American politician. He was the father of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., and paternal grandfather to former United States President John F. Kennedy, former Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

Early life

P.J. was the youngest of five children born to Patrick Kennedy, a poor Irish Roman Catholic immigrant to the United States, and Bridget Murphy. Both of Kennedy's parents were from New Ross, County Wexford. Penal laws, preventing Catholics from owning property or being educated, and the threat of famine had led his parents to emigrate, crossing the Atlantic in a "coffin ship" and settling in Boston, Massachusetts. The couple's first son, John, died of cholera in infancy. Months after P.J.'s birth, his father also succumbed to the infectious cholera epidemic that infested the family's East Boston neighborhood. As the only surviving male, P.J. was the first Kennedy to receive a formal education. "At age fourteen, P.J., as he was called, left school to work on the Boston docks as a stevedore to help support his mother and three older sisters. In the 1880s, with money he had saved from his modest earnings, he launched a business career by buying a saloon in Haymarket Square. In time, he bought a second establishment by the docks. To capitalize on the social drinking of upper-class Boston, P.J. purchased a third bar in an upscale hotel, the Maverick House. Before he was thirty, his growing prosperity allowed him to buy a whiskey-importing business, P. J. Kennedy and Company, that made him a leading figure in Boston's liquor trade... By the time he died in 1929, P.J. ...[held] an interest in a coal company and a substantial amount of stock in a bank, the Columbia Trust Company. His wealth afforded his family of one son, Joseph Patrick, and two daughters an attractive home on Jeffries Point in East Boston." (Robert Dallek)

He attended Boston College on scholarship and became a prominent businessman before entering politics.

Political Career

"Likable, always ready to help less fortunate fellow Irishmen with a little cash and some sensible advice, P.J. enjoyed the approval and respect of most folks in East Boston, a mixed Boston neighborhood of upscale Irish and Protestant elite. Beginning in 1884, he converted his popularity into five consecutive one-year terms in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, followed by three two-year terms in the state senate. Establishing himself as one of Boston's principal Democratic leaders, he was invited to give one of the seconding speeches for Grover Cleveland at the party's 1888 national convention in St. Louis." (Robert Dallek)

"But campaigning, speech making, and legislative maneuvering were less appealing to him than the behind-the-scenes machinations that characterized so much of Boston politics in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. After leaving the senate in 1895, P.J. spent his political career in various appointive offices—elections commissioner and fire commissioner—as the backroom boss of Boston's Ward Two, and as a member of his party's unofficial Board of Strategy." (Robert Dallek)

Marriage & Children

On November 23, 1887, Kennedy married Mary Augusta Hickey, the daughter of a prosperous businessman in the city.

Legacy

In 1914, their son Joseph married Rose Fitzgerald, daughter of John F. Fitzgerald, the Mayor of Boston. The union of P.J.'s son and Fitzgerald's daughter essentially created the Kennedy political family. Together, they had many children, including Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. (a World War II casualty), John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Edward Kennedy.

Note: Patrick Joseph Kennedy is also the name of Edward Kennedy's son, and thus a great-grandson of the elder P. J. Kennedy.