Patrick Joseph Kennedy (entrepreneur)

Patrick Joseph Kennedy (born January 14, 1858 in Boston , Massachusetts , † May 18, 1929 there ) was an American entrepreneur and local politician .

PJKennedy about 1900

Life

Beginnings

He was born in Boston to the Irish immigrant Patrick Kennedy and his wife Bridget Murphy Kennedy. Since his father died shortly after his birth and his mother had three more children, he grew up in poor circumstances. At the age of 14, he left school and worked on the Boston docks as a dock worker (stevedore) to support his mother and three sisters financially. He was also a waiter in harbor taverns.

Rise as an entrepreneur

When he was 22, he used the money he saved to buy a bar , a saloon in Haymarket Square, which was later joined by a pub near the docks. This lifted him and his family out of poverty. To capitalize on the social life of the Boston upper class, he bought a third bar, this time in the Maverick House, a posh hotel . He was barely thirty when he had the funds to start a whiskey import company , PJKennedy and Co. That made him a leading figure in the Boston liquor trade. Most recently, Kennedy was a partner in a coal factory, a shareholder in a small Boston bank, the Columbia Trust Company and general importer of the British whiskey company Haig & Haig.

Politician

From 1884 on, he took political advantage of his economic success and popularity in Boston. Patrick Joseph Kennedy was a local politician, including a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives . He was elected to the House of Representatives five times for a one-year term each time. He was also a member of the Massachusetts Senate three times for two years each . During this time Kennedy was one of the most important leaders of the Democratic Party in Boston and was invited to deliver a speech on Grover Cleveland's candidacy for President of the United States at the national party convention in St. Louis in 1888 . Kennedy left the Senate in 1895 and was a member of his party's unofficial strategy committee. They met in an intimate circle and distributed offices, candidacies and patronage.

Private

In 1887 he married Mary Augusta Hickey . From this marriage were Joseph Patrick Kennedy and two daughters. When Patrick Joseph Kennedy died in 1929, his wealth had continued to grow. With his wealth he was able to offer his wife and children a posh home at Jeffries Point, East Boston. This enabled the later patriarch of the Kennedy family , Joseph P. Kennedy, a relatively carefree youth.

literature

• Robert Dallek: John F. Kennedy - An Unfinished Life, Munich 2003.
• Alan Posener: John F. Kennedy, 7th edition Hamburg 2007.
• Robert von Rimscha: The Kennedys - Splendor and Tragedy of the American Dream, Frankfurt am Main 2003 (paperback edition 1st edition).

Web links

• The Political Graveyard

Individual evidence

1. ^ Alan Posener: John F. Kennedy, 7th edition Hamburg 2007, p. 12.
2. ^ Robert Dallek: John F. Kennedy - An Unfinished Life, Munich 2003, p. 18.
3. ^ Robert Dallek: John F. Kennedy - An Unfinished Life, Munich 2003, p. 18.
4. ↑ Ibid., P. 19.
5. ^ Alan Posener: John F. Kennedy, 7th edition Hamburg 2007, p. 12.
6. ↑ Robert von Rimscha: The Kennedys - Shine and Tragic of the American Dream, Frankfurt am Main 2003 (paperback 1st edition), p. 39.
7. ^ Robert Dallek: John F. Kennedy - An unfinished life, Munich 2003, p. 19.
8. ^ Robert Dallek: John F. Kennedy - An unfinished life, Munich 2003, p. 19.
9. ↑ Currently (as of June 2019) a biography of Patrick Joseph Kennedy has not been published in English-speaking countries or in Germany. The essential information about the actual founder of the Kennedy family and their prosperity and influence can currently be found in general accounts of the Kennedy family (see Rimscha) and in biographies of John F. Kennedy. The essential archive materials, including those on PJ Kennedy, some of which have not yet been published, are in the JFK Library. In any case, an account of his life is still pending.