The wealth of the Kennedy clan began with a "successful" robbery!
The founder of the American branch of Kennedy, almost as a famous saint, was named Patrick. He arrived on American soil from Ireland. It was 1849. Patrick was 26 years old, very poor and very active.
Scary energetic Irishman
His background was as follows. In the Irish town of Dunganstown, Patrick rented a plot of land where, like other peasants, he was going to grow potatoes. He was eager for independence, but the field brought almost no income. Every year you had to pay the owner for rent, buy the necessary equipment - and Patrick lived in monstrous poverty. His house was more like a cattle barn - with an earthen floor, blown by the winds in the cold and heated in spring. Patrick saved on everything: he had no furniture, he did not buy expensive candles, he ate from hand to mouth and wore his clothes to the holes. He worked like a damned one - from dawn to dark, but it was all in vain. The rent went up, and the tenant didn't get rich. Miraculously, he managed to hold out for five years and not die. And then a disaster struck: the Irish fields were struck by potato rot. They saidthat it was brought from America. Almost the entire potato crop died. Since potatoes were the staple food in Ireland, an unthinkable famine broke out. Of course, epidemics of cholera and typhus followed. People began to die out. The population of Ireland by 1849 had dropped by a million. Patrick Kennedy decided that he had nothing to wait at home. He confessed and received the blessing of his father, collected his belongings and went to the nearest port, and from there to British Liverpool, from where ships sailed across the Atlantic Ocean. Of course, there was no question of any cabin. Patrick rode in the lower class, in the hold below deck - this is how slaves were usually taken from the Black Continent. And usually a third of the passengers in the holds died in six weeks of travel. Patrick managed to survive the journey and, along with other surviving Irishmen, he landed in Boston, Massachusetts. Once overseas, Patrick did not go to explore the western lands. He had enough peasant labor in his homeland. He went to work at the shipyard. He was hired as a laborer, it was the same hellish job as processing a potato allotment - from dawn to dusk. The family's biographers say about the future: Patrick managed to get the position of a cooper, get married, have children, and thus lay the foundation for the Kennedy family in America. But for some reason, Kennedy themselves do not like to mention the name of their ancestor, and not at all because he was a poor immigrant, and not a real American. The family's biographers say about the future: Patrick managed to get the position of a cooper, get married, have children, and thus lay the foundation for the Kennedy family in America. But for some reason, Kennedy themselves do not like to mention the name of their ancestor, and not at all because he was a poor immigrant, and not a real American. The family's biographers say about the future: Patrick managed to get the position of a cooper, get married, have children, and thus lay the foundation for the Kennedy family in America. But for some reason, Kennedy themselves do not like to mention the name of their ancestor, and not at all because he was a poor immigrant, and not a real American.
The reason is different: Patrick was involved in the story with the robbery of the stagecoach in 1850. Allegedly, desperate to support his family on a dollar a week (that was the salary at the shipyard), he went into robbers and robbed carriages on the roads of Texas with other desperate Irishmen. Once he got a good prey: the McNorman family was taking their daughter to the wedding, along with a proper dowry. The robbers attacked the stagecoach, took away the property, and killed everyone, including the women. According to legend, before her death, mother McNorman cursed the killers, and her curse, according to the conspiracy theorists, is still in effect against the Kennedy family. Patrick allegedly did not pay attention to the words of the victim, he significantly improved the financial situation of his family and was able to leave his wife and son Patrick Joseph with at least a small inheritance. The immigrant Kennedy died young - at 35 years old. For cholera.
Born in America
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The Kennedy prefer to trace their lineage not from Patrick, but from Patrick Joseph. Patrick Joseph was a slum child. Also the son of a widow. Besides him, this single-parent family had three more sisters. The only one of all children, Patrick Joseph received at least some education - he studied at a church school. But mostly he worked - at first he helped his mother, and then he independently traded from the stall. And saved up, saved up, saved up. As a result, I managed to save up for a small pub in a good area of the city. He was very good at selling alcohol.
Soon he already owned shares in several similar establishments, and then only managed a bunch of outlets. Through the alcohol trade, this Kennedy has developed many useful and useful relationships with clients. And he was advised to join the Democratic Party and get involved in politics. He was elected first to the State House of Representatives, and then to the local Senate. In addition, he successfully married, invested in coal companies, banks, land, railways - and achieved a significant position in society. In any case, his son Joseph Patrick did not have to start his life from scratch.
Joseph, the first of Kennedy, managed to get not just an education, but a prestigious education - he studied at Harvard. He managed to successfully marry - Rose Fitzgerald, the daughter of the Boston mayor, a very wealthy man who stood at the head of the Boston elite. Joseph and his father-in-law had a common passion - they loved money incredibly. And they knew how to make them almost out of thin air. Joseph became a banker even before his marriage, and then invested in real estate, stocks, the new art of cinema, but he got rich, of course, on the sale of alcohol during Prohibition. Then he became friends with bootleggers, gangsters and the mafia. A personal friendship with President Roosevelt earned him the post of Ambassador to Britain. However, with this came an embarrassment: Joseph was an anti-Semite and he was impressed by Nazi Germany, so he managed to become a personal enemy of Churchill. Was, by the way,World War II! The ambassador had to be removed from politics due to imprudent statements he had to leave. And Joseph focused on the children - the young men had to achieve supreme power in the country, so he decided. There were four of them - Joseph, John, Robert, Edward. From five daughters - Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Patricia, Jean - at least he did not demand a fight for the presidency. But they too were required to be Kennedy.
Rosemary was the first to leave the race: in 1941, in order to cure a mental disorder, she underwent a lobotomy. And although she died in 2005, it is difficult to call it life - 64 years in an insane asylum. The eldest son, Joseph, on whom his father relied, as a military pilot, died in 1944 while flying over the English Channel. Four years later, Kathleen also crashed in a plane crash. Charismatic, charming and intelligent John was killed in 1963 while visiting Dallas. He just became the president, the youngest president of the United States. The third son, Robert, was shot and killed during the 1968 election campaign. Old Joseph Patrick planned that his three sons - John, Robert and Edward - would rule the country, replacing each other, from 1960 to 1984. Alas! The last of the brothers, Edward, was a senator for many years, but he will never become president:he died in 2009. Joseph Patrick outlived Robert by a year, but in fact he began to fade back in 1961, after John's victory in the elections: he suffered a blow from the consequences of which he never recovered.
Young heirs
The old generation of Kennedy is practically gone, only Jean, who bears the simple surname Smith, is still alive. She is involved in social activities and in the 1990s was the US Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Ireland. The daughter of Eunice Kennedy and Robert Sargent Shriver, Maria Shriver, became a famous journalist and won prestigious awards. John's daughter Caroline is known as a lawyer and the author of two books on jurisprudence. Robert's son Robert Francis is a lawyer working in the field of environmental law. Robert's daughter Rory is a multi-award winning filmmaker. Sons Joseph and Christopher are involved in business and politics, Douglas and Matthew - in journalism and writing. Daughter Kathleen is a politician and lawyer, daughters Mary-Carrie and Mary-Courtney are involved in community service. But not all of the older Kennedy children are alive.
In 1984, Robert's son David died of a cocaine overdose. In 1997, Michael died while skiing in the mountains. The son of John F. Kennedy, John Jr., has also passed away. In 1999, he crashed his own plane with his wife Carolyn and her sister Lorraine. John hurried to his cousin's wedding. The plane fell into the ocean.
Magazine: Mysteries of History No. 28, Mikhail Romashko