P. J. Kennedy
| P. J. Kennedy | |
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P. J. Kennedy, c. 1900
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Massachusetts House of Representatives 2nd Suffolk District |
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In office 1884–1889 |
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Massachusetts State Senate 4th Suffolk District |
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In office 1889–1895 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
Patrick Joseph Kennedy January 14, 1858 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | May 18, 1929 (aged 71) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse(s) | Mary Augusta Hickey (m. 1887; d. 1923) |
| Children | Joseph, Francis, Mary, and Margaret |
| Parents |
Patrick Kennedy Bridget Murphy |
| Occupation | Politician, businessman |
| Religion | Roman Catholicism |
Patrick Joseph "P. J." Kennedy (January 14, 1858 – May 18, 1929) was an American businessman and politician. He was a major figure in the Democratic Party in Boston. Kennedy was the father of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and the paternal grandfather of President John F. Kennedy.
The son of Irish immigrants, he was the only surviving male in the family, following two outbreaks of cholera, and started work at fourteen as a stevedore in the docks. He 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 Irish 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.
P. J. 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 P. J. was born. Ten months after P. J.'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, P. J. was the first Kennedy 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, P. J. Kennedy left school to work with his mother and three older sisters, Mary, Johanna, 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.
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