From Whence I Came

The Kennedy Legacy, Ireland and America

Brian Murphy, Donnacha Ó Beacháin

• Publisher: Merrion Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781788551434
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: History

Elected in 1960 as the 35th President of the USA, John Fitzgerald Kennedy remains to this day the office's youngest incumbent and he was its first Roman Catholic. His term in office was short, but arguably no US President has inspired more people around the globe than JFK. Even today, for generations born decades after his death, President Kennedy's legacy has an enduring appeal.

This insightful book contains specially commissioned pieces by a range of respected academic and political figures, including former Obama speechwriter, Cody Kennan, the President of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organisation, Kerry Kennedy, and former senior adviser to Bernie Sanders, Tad Devine.

With the presidency of Joe Biden seeing a renewed focus on broader themes within Irish, American and global politics, From Whence I Came is a fascinating and timely collection that offers a fresh perspective on the Kennedy legacy and the politics of Ireland and the United States.

CHAPTER 1

IN SEARCH OF BRIDGET
MURPHY, GREAT-
GRANDMOTHER OF JFK

Celestine Murphy

Virtually all of the information we have about Bridget Murphy Kennedy comes from United States primary sources, principally the church registers, censuses, city directories, and birth, marriage and death civil records of Boston.1 Apart from giving us details of Bridget’s life in Boston, these sources can also provide us with clues to her origins and family in Ireland. Therefore, the names of baptismal sponsors, marriage witnesses and those designated in censuses as ‘visitors’ or ‘boarders’ in Bridget’s Boston household became vital evidence in this research.

Our first glimpse of Bridget is when she marries Patrick Kennedy in the old Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Boston on 26 September 1849.2 No civil record of this marriage is extant. This is a particularly unfortunate loss as the civil record of a marriage in nineteenth-century Massachusetts often included the ages of both parties and the names of their parents – information that would have made research on both Patrick and Bridget very much easier. The church record does supply the names of the witnesses to the marriage: Patrick Barron and Ann McGowan. I shall return to Patrick Barron in due course; Ann McGowan has not, as yet, been identified.

Patrick and Bridget Kennedy cannot be identified with any certainty in the 1850 United States census in Boston. However, it is possible to trace the couple after that, through the births of their children and through other censuses. As the addresses for the children’s births show, the family moved several times in the following years. However, they were never far from the docks areas of East Boston, where Patrick, who was a cooper by trade, found steady employment. The next time we encounter them in official records is for the birth of their first child, Mary, on 6 August 1851 at Meridian Street.3 Mary Kennedy was baptised at St Nicholas’s Church a few days later when her baptismal sponsors were Nicholas Aspill and Joanna Barron.4 Birth and baptismal details for the other children of Patrick and Bridget Kennedy are as follows:

Joanna Kennedy, born at Meridian Street5 and baptised at St Nicholas’ church, 28 November 1852. Baptismal sponsors were Patrick Maloy [sic] and Bridget Aspill;6

John Kennedy, born at Bremen Street and baptised at St Nicholas’ church, 22 July 1854. Baptismal sponsors were Patrick Barron and Margaret Murphy.7 John died the following year of cholera and was interred in Cambridge Catholic cemetery;8

Margaret Kennedy, born at Eutaw Street and baptised 22 July 1855 at St Nicholas’ church. Baptismal sponsors were John MacKenny and Mary Stafford;9

Patrick Joseph Kennedy, born at Liverpool Street, 14 January 1858 and baptised at Most Holy Redeemer church (formerly St Nicholas’ church), 16 January 1858. Baptismal sponsors were Allice Doyle and Mary Doyle.10

I have included details of the children’s baptismal sponsors because some of their last names – Aspill and Barron in particular – point to a possible County Wexford connection, and because baptismal sponsors were (and are) often related to the parents of the child. However, as Boston-based professional genealogist Richard Andrew Pierce points out in a groundbreaking article published in 1992, no connection has ever been established in United States or Irish records between Patrick Kennedy and the Barrons or Aspills, so some kinship with Bridget Murphy Kennedy seems more likely for some of these sponsors.11

Conclusions from Pierce’s meticulously researched article may be summarised as follows:

• Nicholas Aspill, one of the baptismal sponsors for Mary Kennedy in 1851, was a cooper from County Wexford, born c.1817 and arrived in the US in the late 1830s. He had a daughter, Bridget who is one of the baptismal sponsors for Joanna Kennedy in 1852. Bridget Aspill was born in the townland of Nash in the Roman Catholic parish of Ballycullane (formerly Tintern), Co. Wexford, in 1835. In the 1850 US census, Nicholas Aspill is living in the household of Patrick Barron.

• Patrick Barron, one of the baptismal sponsors for John Kennedy in 1854 and a witness at Bridget Murphy’s marriage in 1849, was a cooper from County Wexford. His father’s name was also Patrick Barron and his mother’s name was Mary Aspill. His known siblings were James, Thomas and Joanna. Joanna Barron was a baptismal sponsor for Mary Kennedy in 1851.

• In Ireland, the Barrons lived in the townland of Cloonagh, Catholic parish of Ballycullane, Co. Wexford. The Tithe Applotment books12 for Cloonagh in 1834 show a Patrick Barron on a holding of seventeen acres. Immediately to the east of the Barron holding is the land of a Richard Murphy. This measured sixteen acres. The Barrons left Ireland for Boston in the late 1830s and 1840s. Griffith’s Valuation13 of 1853 shows their former holding was by then in the name of a Patrick Roche. Richard Murphy was still on his holding in 1853.14

• Margaret Murphy, baptismal sponsor for John Kennedy in 1854, was Bridget Murphy’s sister. She was listed in the Kennedy household in the 1855 census. In September 1857 she married Patrick Cleary, a labourer, in Holy Redeemer church; John Lynch and Joanna Barron witnessed the marriage. When Margaret died in Boston in 1880, Richard and Mary Murphy were named as her parents on her death certificate. When Bridget Murphy Kennedy died in 1888 her parents were also named as Richard and Mary Murphy.

• A search for children of Richard and Mary Murphy in the parish of Ballycullane turned up one result: the baptism of Edward Murphy on 18 May 1831, the son of Richard Murphy and Mary Barron. Baptismal sponsors were James Dunn and Mary Scott. No townland is mentioned. However, a short register of deaths for Ballycullane parish is extant for the period from October 1828 to January 1832. This shows that infant Edward Murphy of Cloonagh died on 5 June 1831.15

• The death record (1929) of Bridget Murphy’s son, Patrick Joseph Kennedy gave his mother’s name as Bridget Barron, not Murphy, an error that, as Andrew Pierce puts it, is ‘very suggestive’. He concludes from this research that it is highly likely that Richard Murphy and Mary Barron were Bridget’s parents and that Patrick and Mary (Aspill) Barron were either Bridget Murphy’s maternal grandparents or her uncle and aunt.

Returning to the narrative of Bridget and Patrick’s life in Boston, we find that tragedy befell the couple in 1855 when their young son, John, died of cholera. Immigrants in East Boston neighbourhoods endured grinding poverty, overcrowding, poor sanitation and ventilation, and a host of social problems. Outbreaks of cholera were common and consumption (tuberculosis) was a leading cause of death. Patrick’s skills as a cooper were probably enough to keep his family from destitution but, when he died of consumption on 22 November 1858, Bridget was left with four young children to rear and without an income.

In the 1860 census Bridget is listed with her four children in a building with seven other families, including her sister Margaret and Margaret’s husband, Patrick Cleary. Bridget’s personal estate is given in the census as $75, an indication perhaps of her resourcefulness in grim circumstances.16 Also listed in the household are two visitors, a young girl, Mary Roche and a small boy, aged 6, Michael O’Brien. I will come back to Mary Roche’s presence in Bridget’s household later.

In the 1865 state census, we find Bridget running a grocery business, something she would build upon and later expand into a bakery and a variety store. From the 1870 census we learn that Bridget could read but not write. By then, her two eldest daughters were old enough to contribute to the family income, with Mary working as a skirt maker and Johanna employed in a jute mill. Bridget’s other children, Margaret, aged about 15, and Patrick Joseph (P.J.), aged about 12 years, are absent from the household.

By 1880, Bridget was living at 25 Border Street with her eldest daughter, Mary, and her son P.J. who is described as a brass finisher.17 Also in the house are two young men, Martin and Laurence Kane, described as ‘lodgers’ and working as teamsters. The Kane brothers had emigrated to Boston in 1872. They can be traced back to Ballyhackbeg, County Wexford, a townland about eight miles south of Cloonagh and within Ballycullane Catholic parish. Their parents were Philip Kane and Margaret Murphy.18 Although it is possible that Margaret Murphy Kane and Bridget Murphy Kennedy were related in some way, it cannot have been a near relationship as Margaret Kane’s son, Laurence, married Bridget’s eldest daughter, Mary, on 1 January 1883, in Holy Redeemer Catholic church.19 Nevertheless, it seems likely that the presence in Bridget’s household of two young men from her home parish in Wexford was not entirely coincidental and that Bridget had somehow remained in contact with her relations back in Wexford.

At this point, my research turned to the possibility of establishing if more of Bridget’s siblings might have followed her to the United States.20 Relying on Andrew Pierce’s identification of Richard Murphy and Mary Barron as ‘highly likely’ to have been Bridget’s parents, I searched the Massachusetts death records using the parameters ‘born in Ireland’ and the parents’ names. Two of the results – Ann Murphy Kennedy and Catherine Murphy Roche – fitted these criteria. I then traced both women through United States censuses in the hope that some of their children were also born in Ireland and that their baptismal records might make the important link to Ballycullane or, more specifically, to Cloonagh.

I started with Ann because I was intrigued that she had also married a Patrick Kennedy. Ann first appears in the United States 1880 census. She is a widow and is living with her adult family in Salem, a town on the coast about sixteen miles north of Boston. Her children were all born in Ireland. A search through the Catholic marriage registers for Ballycullane (Tintern) found Ann’s marriage to Patrick Kennedy on 23 February 1846. ‘Cloonagh’ is given as her place of residence and ‘Adamstown’ for her husband, Patrick Kennedy. James Hennessy and Richard Murphy are witnesses.

I then searched the Adamstown/Newbawn baptismal registers for their children and found the following individuals, all with an address at Misterin, a townland about ten miles north east of Cloonagh and within the Catholic parish of Adamstown: John Kennedy, bp. 8 May 1847; Thomas Kennedy, bp. 17 June 1849; Patrick Kennedy, bp. 3 April 1851; Mary Kennedy, bp. 1 May 1853; Moses Kennedy, bp. 20 November 1857. With the exception of Moses Kennedy, the names of Ann’s adult children in the 1880 census correspond with these baptisms.

Moses was a common boys’ name in County Wexford in the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century.21 However, its uniqueness in the United States proved most useful in searching through the Massachusetts death registers, where I found Moses had died of liver disease in Salem in 1872. This gave me a date before which he moved to the United States, presumably with a parent or older sibling as he was quite young. A search for him in the emigration records found him arriving at Boston in 1871 on board the Tripoli out of Liverpool. With him were his mother, Ann Murphy Kennedy and one of his brothers, Patrick. I also discovered that Moses had been buried in St Mary’s cemetery in Salem, and that his name is included on a headstone there. It reads: ‘KENNEDY Patrick, died in County Wexford, Ireland in 1871 age seventy-seven. His wife ANN died in Salem in 1893, age sixty-five. MOSES died 1872, age thirteen. THOMAS died 2 January 1921’.

Although the ages at death of Patrick, Ann and Moses are incorrect,22 it ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Biographical note on contributors
• Introduction Brian Murphy and Donnacha Ó Beacháin
• 1. In Search of Bridget Murphy, Great-grandmother of JFK
• 2. ‘A harmless reassurance’: Joseph Kennedy, FDR and the 1938 Anglo-Irish Agreements
• 3. Electing Kennedy
• 4. ‘Go talk to Senator Russell’: John F. Kennedy and Richard B. Russell, Jr
• 5. Screening Kennedy in Ireland
• 6. From Shannon to Dallas: The Final Twenty-one Weeks of JFK’s Presidency
• 7. Judging Kennedy
• 8. John F. Kennedy’s Presidency and the Irish–United States Relationship
• 9. The Legacy of a Thousand Days
• 10. Busing in Boston and Senator Edward Kennedy
• 11. Ted Kennedy: Distant Peacemaker
• 12. Sharing the Passion and Action of Our Times
• 13. The Download: Writing Speeches with Barack Obama
• 14. The Bernie Sanders Campaign Story
• 15. Peace, Justice and Compassion Towards Those who have Suffered
• Acknowledgements
• Notes
• Index
• Plates