P. J. Kennedy

P. J. Kennedy
P. J. Kennedy, c. 1900
Massachusetts State Senator from the 4th Suffolk District
In office 1889–1895
Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from the 2nd Suffolk District
In office 1884–1889
Personal details
Born	Patrick Joseph Kennedy (1858-01-14)January 14, 1858 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	May 18, 1929(1929-05-18) (aged 71) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Mary Augusta Hickey ​ ​ (m. 1887; died 1923)​
Relations	See Kennedy family
Children	Joseph, Francis, Mary, and Margaret
Parent(s)	Patrick Kennedy Bridget Murphy
Occupation	Businessman and politician

Patrick Joseph "P. J." Kennedy (January 14, 1858 – May 18, 1929) was an American businessman and politician. Kennedy was a major figure in the Democratic Party in Boston. He was the father of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and the paternal grandfather of President John F. Kennedy.

He was the only surviving male in the family after two outbreaks of cholera killed his father and brother. He started work at fourteen as a stevedore in the docks. Kennedy owned three saloons and a whisky import house, and eventually had major interests in coal and banking. He moved successfully into politics, as a sociable man able to mix comfortably with both the Catholic and the Protestant elite, and he sat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and in the Massachusetts Senate. His particular talent was for the behind-the-scenes machinations for which Boston politics became so notorious.

Early life

Young P. J. Kennedy around the mid-to-late 1870s

Kennedy was the youngest of five children born to Irish Catholic immigrants Patrick Kennedy (1823–1858) and Bridget Murphy (1824–1888), who were both from New Ross, County Wexford, and married in Boston on September 26, 1849. The couple's elder son, John, had died of cholera in infancy two years before Kennedy was born. Ten months after Kennedy's birth, his father Patrick also succumbed to the infectious cholera epidemic that infested the family's East Boston neighborhood. As the only surviving male, Kennedy was the first family member to receive a formal education. His mother Bridget had purchased an East Boston stationery and notions store where she had worked. The business took off and expanded into a grocery and liquor store.

At the age of fourteen, Kennedy left school to work with his mother and three older sisters, Mary, Joanna, and Margaret, as a stevedore on the Boston Docks. In the 1880s, with money he had saved from his modest earnings, he launched a business career by buying a saloon in Haymarket Square downtown. In time, he bought a second establishment by the East Boston docks. Next, to capitalize on the social drinking of upper-class Boston, Kennedy purchased a third bar in an upscale East Boston hotel, the Maverick House. Before he was thirty, his growing prosperity allowed him to buy a whiskey-importing business.

By the time of his death in 1929, Kennedy 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 and two daughters an attractive home on Jeffries Point in East Boston.

Political career

P. J. Kennedy in 1893 as a Massachusetts State Senator

Kennedy was "always ready to help less fortunate fellow Irishmen with a little cash and some sensible advice." He enjoyed the approval and respect of most folks in East Boston, living on the hill of 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 Massachusetts 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. However, he found campaigning, speech making, and legislative maneuvering, to be less appealing 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, Kennedy spent his political career as an appointed elections commissioner, an appointed fire commissioner, as the backroom boss of Boston's Ward Two, and as a member of his party's unofficial Board of Strategy.

Marriage and children

On November 23, 1887, Kennedy married Mary Augusta Hickey (December 6, 1857 – May 6, 1923), daughter of James Hickey and Margaret Martha Field. The couple had four children and remained married until Hickey’s death in May 1923.

Name	Birth	Death	Age	Notes
Joseph Patrick Kennedy	September 6, 1888	November 18, 1969	81 years, 2 months	Married on October 7, 1914, to Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald (July 22, 1890 – January 22, 1995); 9 children
Francis Benedict Kennedy	March 11, 1891	June 14, 1892	1 year, 3 months
Mary Loretta Kennedy	August 6, 1892	November 18, 1972	80 years, 3 months	Married on October 12, 1927, to George William Connelly (June 10, 1898 – August 29, 1971); one daughter
Margaret Louise Kennedy	October 22, 1898	November 14, 1974	76 years, 1 month	Married on June 14, 1924, to Charles Joseph Burke (August 23, 1899 – April 5, 1967); three children

Ted Kennedy, youngest son of Joseph, named his younger son Patrick (born 1967) to honor P. J. Kennedy.

Death

In his later years, Kennedy developed degenerative liver disease. In April 1929, he was admitted to Deaconess Hospital to receive treatment. He died there on May 18 at the age of 71. His funeral was held at St. John the Evangelist Church in Winthrop, Massachusetts on May 21. The Boston Globe reported that hundreds of mourners lined the streets to watch Kennedy’s funeral procession and businesses in East Boston closed to honor him. Kennedy is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Malden, Massachusetts.

Legacy

In 1914, P.J. Kennedy's son Joseph married Rose Fitzgerald (1890–1995), the eldest daughter of Boston Mayor John F. Fitzgerald (1863–1950). Joe and Rose had nine children, including World War II casualty Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. (1915–1944), President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963), Senator Robert F. Kennedy (1925–1968), and longtime Senator Ted Kennedy (1932–2009).

The Patrick J. Kennedy School, named for him, is a public grammar school located in East Boston.