by Thomas Maier
During the past century and a half, this remarkable family, like so many other Irish Catholics, ascended from beleaguered famine survivors to affluent, fully assimilated citizens. They not only reflected the changes in political, social and cultural life for Irish Catholics but often proved instrumental in their transformation. Today, the Kennedys still retain their appeal in the public’s imagination—though no longer out of loyalty to one candidate, a particular ethnic group or even to the Democratic Party itself, as Kathleen Kennedy Townsend found in her failed bid for governor. Their family’s history speaks to a broad egalitarian ideal about government and the positive impact it can make in people’s lives, the role of family and faith in sustaining individuals in turbulent times, and the promise of opportunity regardless of one’s status in society.
In August 2000, at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, the Kennedys brought this message with them when they appeared on the podium together, as a family, demonstrating their strength in numbers. In this city, they had experienced great triumph and shattering loss. Senator Ted Kennedy mentioned how proud President Kennedy would be that a “new barrier of bigotry”was broken by Lieberman’s nomination. Television viewers saw Ted’s son, Congressman Patrick Kennedy, the environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and his sister, Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, all speak of their family legacy during the convention. But a year after her brother’s death, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg’s appearance drew the most attention.
As she walked to the microphone, the band played the strains of Camelot. The packed auditorium seemed collectively to recall the memory of her father—though many delegates were children or not even born when John Kennedy was nominated in this same city forty years earlier. Caroline was now a dignified forty-two-year-old woman, an author in her own right. In a nervous, heartfelt voice, she reminded the national audience of abiding lessons from her parent’s generation.
“They taught us the importance of faith and family, and how these values must be woven together into lives of purpose and meaning,” said Caroline, amid blue signs all around her emblazoned with just her first name.“Now it is our turn to prove that the New Frontier was not a place in time but a timeless call. Now, when many of us are doing so well, it is time once again to ask more of ourselves.”
It was the kind of speech, with echoes of St. Luke and her father’s inaugural, that would have made her ancestors smile.
A Note on Sources
At its heart, this book relies on the personal and public documents of the Kennedy family as well as research and interviews conducted by the author in Ireland, Italy and the United States.
In August 2000, the voluminous private papers of Joseph P. Kennedy, housed at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston,were made available to historical researchers granted permission to review them by the family foundation’s screening committee. These Joseph P.Kennedy (JPK) papers cover a period of five decades and served as an important primary source for much of the documentation and context in this narrative. In gaining access to these papers, the author was asked for a general description of this book, but no restrictions were placed on the use or interpretation of these documents. Much of the material quoted from the JPK papers appears for the first time in this work. Similarly, the author was granted full access to the Kennedy Family Collection of private photographs, some of which have never been published. In addition, the Kennedy Homestead in Dunganstown Ireland granted access to the privately held 1947 photograph taken by young John F. Kennedy on his visit to meet his Irish cousins, which also appears here for the first time.
Other documents and research materials were provided from the Boston Public Library, the Library of Congress, the National Library of Ireland in Dublin, the County Wexford Library, the County Cork Library, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Vatican City, the Vatican Secret Archives, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Di Roma, the Boston College Library, the Archdiocese of Boston archives, the Fordham University Library archives, the Boston Police Department archives, the New York City Public Library, the University of Massachusetts–Boston Library, the New York City Historical Society, the Queensborough Public Library, the Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and the unprocessed personal papers of Rev. Richard McSorley in the archives of the Georgetown University Library. The author’s local library, the Commack Public Library in Commack,N.Y., provided assistance in securing numerous books, research papers and oral histories, for which Susanne McGovern and Joanne Kelleher deserve my gratitude. At the JFK Library, Stephen Plotkin, Megan Desnoyers, Allan Goodrich, James Hill, Michael Desmond and several other staff members were unflaggingly gracious and helpful. Kia Campbell at the Library of Congress helped secure several photos and drawings used in this book.
In Ireland, a great deal of the material and interviews cited below were obtained with the help of Patrick Grennan at the Kennedy Homestead. He runs the family farm, a museum dedicated to the history of JFK’s 1963 visit, an informative website (www.kennedy.homestead.com) about the Kennedy’s Irish history and provided great insight and hospitality to the author. Others who shared their comments include: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith, former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Joseph Gargan,Amanda Smith,Theodore Sorensen, former U.S. Sen. Harris Wofford, former U.S. Sen. Eugene McCarthy, Gerry Adams, Niall O’Dowd, Edwin Guthman, Rev. Richard McSorley, Rev. Andrew Greeley,William Haddad, Melody Miller, Dorothy Tubridy, Mary Ann Ryan, Patrick Kennedy (JFK’s third cousin in Dunganstown ),Thomas Grennan, John W. Pierce, Richard Macauley, Elizabeth Shannon, James M. O’Toole and Ruth-Ann Harris. In addition, this work relied on the more contemporaneous recollections of several people who granted oral history interviews for the JFK Library, including John M. Bailey, Rev. John Cavanaugh, Cesar Chavez, Lucius D. Clay, John Cogley, Cardinal Richard J. Cushing, Mark J. Dalton,William Douglas Home, Allen Dulles, Hugh Fraser, Josephine Grennan, David L. Hackett, Lord Harlech (William David Ormsby-Gore), Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, Robert F. Kennedy,Thomas J. Kiernan, Martin Luther King Jr., Belford V. Lawson, Marjorie McKenzie Lawson, Sean Lemass, Henry Cabot Lodge, Louis Martin,Andrew Minihan, Francis X.Morrissey, Patrick J.“Patsy” Mulkern, Fletcher Knebel,Thomas P.“Tip” O’Neill, Frank M. O’Ferrall, David F. Powers, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Charles Spaulding,William J. “Billy” Sutton, Dorothy Tubridy, James W.Wine and Harris Wofford.
Part I: From Ireland to Irish-American
The quotation from George Bernard Shaw can be found in Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw: The One-Volume Definitive Biography.
Chapter One: The Boys of Wexford
Various published accounts, oral histories and interviews described JFK’s visit to New Ross in 1963, along with several files at the John F.Kennedy Presidential Library that deal directly or indirectly with this trip. This reportage was also supplemented with firsthand observations and research by the author in New Ross, Ireland. Kennedy’s statements during his Ireland trip are contained in public documents available in Public Papers of the Presidents, and in JFK Library folders relating to presidential aide David Powers. Other lively accounts of JFK’s trip used in this chapter are included in Joseph Roddy, “Ireland:The Kennedy Cult—They Cried the Rain Down That Night,” Look, November 17, 1964; Richard Rovere,“Journal of a Psuedo-Event,” New Yorker, July 13, 1963;Tom Wicker, “Ireland Prepares for Kennedy Visit Thursday,” New York Times, June 23, 1963; Tom Wicker,“Kennedy Sees the Cousin Who Didn’t Catch the Boat,” The New York Times, June 28, 1963;“When Kennedy Went ‘Home’ to Ireland,” U.S. News and World Report, July 8, 1963. JFK’s conversations in New Ross were supplemented with the oral histories of New Ross Mayor Andrew Minihan, Dorothy Tubridy at the JFK Library; Jean Kennedy Smith’s recollections of the trip are from the author’s conversation with her and in Laurence Leamer, The Kennedy Women. Other details of the trip can be found in Kenneth P. O’Donnell and David Powers, Johnny,We Hardly Kne
w Ye, and the National Archives of Ireland file marked “President Kennedy Visits Ireland.”
Firsthand descriptions of the River Barrow valley, the Kennedy Homestead where Patrick Kennedy once lived, the homes of other Kennedy relatives in the community and an examination of Kennedy headstones at the local cemetery were obtained by the author in Dunganstown and surrounding area. More detailed renderings of life on the Kennedy farm during the 1840s were provided by Patrick Grennan and Mary Ann Ryan, who run the Kennedy Homestead today. They pointed out to the author various artifacts discovered over the years on the premises, including coopering tools and “Cherry Bros.” barrels. Grennan also compiled a family tree of the Irish Kennedys dating before Patrick Kennedy. These accounts were verified or added to by others, including Kennedy relatives Thomas Grennan and James Kennedy, as well as local historian John Pierce. The description of New Ross during these famine years comes from accounts in bound volumes of theWexford Independent reviewed by the author in the County Wexford Library as well as in Anna Kinsella, County Wexford in the Famine Years; and John Pierce, The Kennedys Who Left and the Kennedys Who Stayed. Pierce’s privately published account was sponsored by the Kennedy Homestead and the Irish Kennedys generally credit him with the most thorough generational research of their family. Further insights of 1848 farm life were in Tim Pat Coogan,“Sure and It’s County Kennedy Now,” New York Times Magazine, June 23, 1963.
Chapter Two: The Heirs of Brian Boru
For the 1963 presidential visit, the Library of Congress prepared a genealogical report tracing the Kennedy family’s lineage back to the chieftains in Ormond and, at one time, the ancient kings of Ireland, which can be found in files relating to this trip at the JFK Library. The reliability of this historic account may be debatable, though similar accounts about the “O’Cinneide” clan and its relation to Brian Boru can be found in several published Irish histories, notably by The Irish Family History Foundation and in Dermot Gleeson, The Last Lords of Ormond. Similar accounts also appeared in Maurice N. Hennessy, I’ll Come Back in the Springtime: John F. Kennedy and the Irish; and in Rev. J.F. Brennan, The Evolution of Everyman.
The British involvement in Ireland, including the Cromwell suppression of uprisings in Wexford and the resulting penal law against Catholics, is discussed in numerous histories, including Robert Kee, Ireland: A History; Antonia Fraser, Cromwell,The Lord Protector; and Terry Golway, For the Cause of Liberty:A Thousand Years of Ireland’s Heroes. In the National Library of Ireland, additional details about the 1798 Wexford uprising were found in Kevin Whelan, The Catholic Community in 18th Century Wexford; and Fr. Fintan Morris, A Time of Change and Consolidation— Ferns in the 19th Century, both of which were contained in Memory and Mission,Walter Forde, ed. The impact of O’Neill’s death on the Irish people is captured in “Lament for the Death of Eoghan Ruadh O’Neill,” by Thomas Davis, 1814–1845, reprinted in numerous anthologies of Irish poetry as is the popular verse “The Wearin O’The Green.”The involvement of Kennedy family members in the political battles of 1798 are mentioned in various published accounts, though none with great specificity due to the largely unrecorded circumstances of the time. These versions vary from accounts found in the County Wexford Library, to interviews with local historians John Pierce and Thomas Grennan, to such published accounts as Edward Laxton, The Famine Ships:The Irish Exodus to America, as well as Brennan’s The Evolution of Everyman, and Pierce’s The Kennedys Who Left and the Kennedys Who Stayed.The Kennedys affected by the 1798 uprising in Wexford were those who were contemporaries of James Kennedy, the father of Patrick Kennedy who emigrated to America.
Chapter Three: The Starvation
The opening quotation is from John Stuart Mill, John Stuart Mill on Ireland.The author’s review of land records, grave headstones and other documentation, including a detailed family tree prepared by the Kennedy Homestead—which dates back to the birth of Kennedy forebearer, John Kennedy, in 1738—informed this account of Patrick Kennedy’s beginnings. In Richard Griffith’s “General Valuation of Rateable Property—1850,” it lists “Patrick Kennedy” instead of “James Kennedy” on the land where James Kennedy eventually runs his farm, even though Patrick Kennedy was living by then in Boston. The reasons are lost to history. Though Pierce isn’t convinced, some family members, such as the Grennans, suggest it is likely that Patrick Kennedy was sympathetic to the popular political cause of Irish freedom, though no definitive proof exists. (One claim said Patrick Kennedy had been an active rebel, probably a sworn United Irishman, before he left for America, and was published in a local newspaper article entitled “Our Golden Haired Bit of Graduer,” Biatas—The Tillage Farmer, October 1988, contained in the Dave Powers files at the JFK Library.)
The political brilliance of Daniel O’Connell is recalled in Cecil Woodham-Smith, The GreatHunger: Ireland 1845–1849; and Kee’s Ireland: A History. O’Connell writings about the power of nonviolent agitation in overcoming prejudice appeared in theWexford Independent,April 10, 1847. Deaths and other suffering from the Famine’s impact in Wexford were outlined in considerable detail in Kinsella’s County Wexford in the Famine Years, as well as Mary Gwinnell,“The Famine Years in County Wexford,” Journal of Wexford Historical Society, and Liam Kennedy et al., Mapping the Great Irish Famine:A Survey of the Famine Decades. Specific details about the Famine in Wexford, and its likely impact on the Kennedys, were derived from newspaper accounts appearing in the Wexford Independent, on January 20, 1847, February 27, 1847, and an April 10, 1847, dispatch from a Waterford Freeman correspondent that was reprinted inThe Wexford Independent.All these accounts were reviewed by the author from existing bounded volumes at the Wexford County Public Library or the National Library of Ireland in Dublin. In addition, further insights about the role of the nineteenth-century Irish church were in Charles Morris, American Catholic; Mon. Patrick J. Corish, “Irish Catholics Before the Famine: Patterns and Questions,” Journal of Wexford Historical Society and previously mentioned texts.
Chapter Four: American Wake
The opening verse by Ethna Carbery appears in “The Passing of the Gael,” taken from Seumas MacManus, ed., The Four Winds of Eirinn: Poems by Ethna Carbery.The “American Wake” and other aspects of Patrick Kennedy’s departure from Dunganstown is derived from several sources, mostly from interviews with Patrick and Thomas Grennan, Mary Ann Ryan, local historian John W. Pierce, along with several published accounts, including Laxton’s The Famine Ships:The Irish Exodus to America, Kee’s Ireland: A History, Kinsella’s County Wexford in the Famine Years and Brennan’s The Evolution of Everyman. Further context was provided by Hasia R. Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century;Thomas Gallagher, Paddy’s Lament; and Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles. Numerous books and articles dating to the present contend that Patrick Kennedy left directly from Ireland for Boston, and that aboard ship he met Bridget Murphy. However, the limited evidence suggests something quite different. A manifest of the passengers aboard the Washington Irving—a microfilmed copy of which was examined by the author in the special collections section of the Boston Public Library—shows Kennedy left from Liverpool, England, before arriving in the U.S. on April 28, 1849.Kennedy cousins and local accounts in Ireland contend Patrick left Wexford in the fall of 1848, crossed the Irish sea and stayed for several months in Liverpool before saving enough for the fare to Boston. They also contend it is likely that Patrick and Bridget, though traveling separately, met earlier in Ireland where they made their plans to marry once they were united in America. This version appears the most accurate and conforms with the limited available documentation of their journey and the historical accounts of Irish émigrés from this region at that time. Details about the famine ships and life for the transigent and often desititute Irish staying in Liverpool could be found in Pol O’Conghaile, “Chasing the Famine Ships,” and accounts of the Irish emigration reported in the Wexford Independent and theWaterford Freeman, found in the archives of the Na
tional Library of Ireland. In addittion to specific details about this ship, a general awareness of the Liverpool-American route for Irish coffin ships is mentioned in John F. Kennedy’s A Nation of Immigrants and in John Henry Cutler, Honey Fitz, the biography of Kennedy’s grandfather, former Boston Mayor John F. Fitzgerald. Views about the Irish situation from the Times of London are quoted in Gallagher’s Paddy’s Lament, and also in actual news accounts from the Times of London, dated March 8, September 17, 1847 and October 4, 1848, and the Dublin University Magazine, April 1847.What it was like to leave Ireland during the Famine is recalled in Robert Whyte, Journey of an Irish Coffin Ship; Ruth-Ann M. Harris, The Search for Missing Friends. Census and local government documents, including the assessor’s report for Ward Two, provide a sketchy account of the humble, hardscrabble life shared by Patrick and Bridget Kennedy in East Boston. Further details come from various published accounts, including Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Kennedys: An American Drama.
Chapter Five: Brahmins and Bigotry
Information about “the foreign element” and other aspects of Irish immigrant life in Boston was found in the 1855 Boston census, a bound volume available at the Boston Public Library research section. Similar statitistical information and analysis of Boston’s Irish appeared in Ruth- Ann Harris, The Search for Missing Friends, as well as additional insights provided by Harris in conversations with the author. More detailed historical analysis of the Irish in Boston can be found in Oscar Handlin, Boston’s Immigrants:A Study of Acculturation; Dennis P. Ryan, Beyond the Ballot Box; Hasia R. Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century; Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles;Thomas H. O’Connor, The Boston Irish: A Political History; Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White; and Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted.