Joseph Patrick Kennedy and Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald came from proud Irish stock, and that would have an effect on their family’s identity, work ethic, and ambitions for generations to come. All four of their paternal grandparents—Patrick Kennedy and Bridget Murphy, and Thomas Fitzgerald and Rosanna Cox—emigrated from Ireland to Boston in the late 1840s. They were part of a mass exodus caused by the Irish Famine, a potato crop failure which lasted for five years and killed nearly one million people while sending another two million into exile. Many Irish who left for America didn’t survive the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, dying from disease on board ships or languishing at the quarantine station in Boston Harbor. But the families of Joseph and Rose were among the fortunate survivors who endured and flourished, and that durability became part of the family’s legacy.

The nineteenth-century Irish immigrants coming off the boats in Boston Harbor believed they were stepping into the Promised Land. They were often startled to encounter rampant anti-Irish discrimination among nativist Bostonians. It was an unpleasant and ugly truth that many Bostonians, even those descended from the early Puritans who came to Massachusetts in search of religious freedom, were intolerant of Irish, Catholics, and immigrants in general. That prejudice often had a violent and tragic outcome, as Irish newcomers were physically harassed, their homes and churches burned, their children not welcome at Yankee schools or social events. “No Irish Need Apply” ads ran in Boston newspapers frequently. In addition to lawmakers seeking to restrict their civic and religious freedoms, Irish families faced social discrimination, including limited opportunities for employment and intolerance in schools and other parts of society. The Kennedys and the Fitzgeralds had a heightened sense of pride and purpose in overcoming such trials and tribulations on their road from poverty to prosperity.

Joseph P. Kennedy, born in East Boston on September 6, 1888, came from this type of family. He was the son of Mary Augusta Hickey and Patrick Joseph Kennedy, an important figure in Boston’s Irish community whose parents were of the Famine generation. Known as P.J., Joe’s dad had risen from common laborer to highly successful businessman, buying a run-down saloon in Haymarket Square, then purchasing two more taverns and eventually becoming a wholesale liquor distributor. He was instrumental in the organization of two Boston financial institutions, the Columbia Trust Company and the Sumner Savings Bank. Early on, P.J. had also entered politics, serving in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and Massachusetts Senate. But his enduring influence was in his unofficial capacity as a “ward boss” in East Boston’s Ward Two, helping to organize the Irish community into a powerful political force. P.J. held sway in East Boston for more than thirty years.

A rare, undated photograph of Mary Augusta Hickey Kennedy.

Joe Kennedy grew up in East Boston with his younger sisters, Loretta (born 1892) and Margaret (born 1898). Another brother, Francis, born three years after Joe, did not survive infancy. Joe attended Catholic schools until the eighth grade, when he enrolled in the prestigious Boston Latin School, a college preparatory academy in the Boston Public School System. He was captain of the baseball and the tennis teams, a star on the basketball team, and class president his senior year. He graduated from Boston Latin in 1908 and entered Harvard University, one of a handful of Irish Catholics admitted to study there, eventually earning a bachelor of arts degree in 1912. That fall, Joe became an assistant state bank examiner for Massachusetts, the first step in a career that would bring him great wealth.

In his last years at Harvard, Joe began courting Rose Fitzgerald, daughter of Boston Mayor John F. (Honey Fitz) Fitzgerald and the former Mary Josephine Hannon. Rose, their eldest child and first daughter, was born on July 22, 1890, in Boston’s North End, a bustling neighborhood on the city’s waterfront filled with merchants, sailors, peddlers, and immigrants, mainly Irish, Jewish, and Italian. Honey Fitz and Mary Josephine would have five more children: Agnes, Eunice, Thomas, John Jr., and Frederick.

At the end of the nineteenth century, politics was a sure way for Irish immigrants to rise from their humble surroundings and climb the American ladder of success. Like Joe Kennedy, Rose was born into a political family. Her father, John, was on the Boston Common Council and in the Massachusetts Senate, and was a U.S. congressman from 1895 to 1901, when Rose was just a child. When Rose was fifteen, Honey Fitz was elected mayor of Boston, serving in 1906–1907 and 1910–1913. Her graduation from Dorchester High School in June 1906 was front-page news in the Boston newspapers as Mayor Fitzgerald proudly gave Rose her diploma.

Because her mother was not comfortable in a political role, Rose served as hostess at many of her father’s political events, an experience that would prepare her for a life as the daughter and mother of politicians and as the wife of a prominent public figure. Rose’s father was regarded as one of the most popular and colorful Boston politicians in the city’s history. Nicknamed “Honey Fitz” because of his sweet singing voice, Fitzgerald once said, “When I was mayor of Boston, I learned that everywhere a mayor went, he had to make a speech, and no one really wanted to hear a speech every time, so I sang.” His favorite song, “Sweet Adeline,” became the unofficial anthem of his many political campaigns.