The First Kennedys focused first on Bridget and Patrick Kennedy, who (separately) immigrated to the U.S. from Ireland, then spent the bulk of the book taking readers through the life of their son P.J.

While I am not someone that has spent much time learning about the Kennedy family in general, I know that many Americans have a fascination with them and thought it would be interesting to see where their story began. I admittedly knew very little about what Irish people experienced when they first immigrated to the U.S. (and in this book it was primarily focused on the Irish experience in the Boston area). I was shocked and appalled to learn how they were treated, which really made Bridget, Patrick, and P.J.'s stories that much more impressive. The Kennedy family came from essentially nothing, and after reading this book, I do believe that Bridget deserves a lot of the credit for changing the trajectory of the Kennedy family's lives (including the generations that came after her and her children).

While I truly respect the amount of time, energy, and research that the author must have put into this book, I did find it a bit long-winded, dry, and mired in the details a bit too much at certain times. I found myself not wanting to pick the book up and trudging through small sections before putting it down again. It took me quite a while to get through this book, which is not typical for me. There was a good deal of time spent on Boston politics - and while pertinent, it just felt like more detail than necessary.

To be fair, I am not the target audience for this book. I'm not a history buff, nor have I ever taken a real interest in the Kennedy family. So while I would have preferred a shorter, more concise version of this book, I have no doubt that others will find it fascinating.

Thank you to NetGalley and Mariner Books for the e-arc of this book in exchange for my honest review.

The First Kennedys is an interesting glimpse into the lives of Bridget Kennedy, an Irish immigrant, and her son, P.J. It is the amazing story of how this mother and son lay the groundwork for the Kennedy family becoming one of the most successful and legendary American political families.

The first part of the book describes the experience of Irish immigrants in general and the probable experience of Bridget during the 19th century. The author includes details about the harrowing travel conditions aboard the “coffin ships,” treacherous work conditions for immigrant laborers, and the rampant xenophobia the Irish had to face in the United States.

The second part of the book focuses on P.J.’s ascent from humble beginnings and delves extensively into his political dealings and many business ventures in Massachusetts. Additionally, the author describes P.J.’s philanthropic and charitable nature.

The First Kennedys is a fascinating American rags-to-riches story. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the topics of immigration or politics.

This book borders between history and biography with some biographical information about Bridget Kennedy and her son P.J. Kennedy, the great grandmother and grandfather of the well known American Kennedys. The story starts in Ireland with Bridget’s travels to Boston during the potato famine and follows her life as a young, Irish widow, mother and business owner. Needless to say, Bridget had a lot going against her at that time in American history, yet her perseverance could be credited for the Kennedys and their impact on American history.

While the book does follow this specific family and give a fair amount of biographical information, I would argue that the Kennedys are really just a vessel for the author to share an extensive amount of information about a variety of historical events and ideas which were contemporary to the first Kennedy’s to arrive/live in America. For example, there are chapters filled with information related to: the Irish potato famine, transatlantic immigration, treatment of immigrants in America in the 1840s-early 1900s, anti-catholic and anti-Irish sentiments, tenement housing, cholera, the shipping industry and its turn to steam powered boats, the civil war, liquor sales and prohibitions and politics. At times the author had to speculate about biographical information due to poor record keeping, for example which ship Bridget sailed on or the date of someone’s birthday, so as a result it felt more of a general history of the time period. I was a bit bored during some of the sections such as the liquor sales or the politics but I can appreciate the extensive information and research covered. I think this would be a great book for anyone interested an Irish-American experience during this time period as well as anyone interested in the first Kennedy’s and their family.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book!

So much of what we know about the Kennedy family comes from the era of Joe Kennedy, the tough talking businessman turned ambassador who pushed his sons onto the political stage and created a dynasty marred by tragedy. This is not that familiar story. The First Kennedys are Bridget and Patrick who come separately to America, meet in Boston and marry. Their youngest child and surviving son P.J. will be grandfather to JFK.

Neal Thompson relies on records to paint a vivid picture of the hard life Irish immigrants led in Boston. Prejudice, poverty and disease were common. The Kennedy’s first son died of cholera as a toddler and Patrick himself died of tuberculosis at 35, leaving Bridget to raise four young children. She did so by becoming a hairdresser then buying a store. Her ambition and drive became the dominant characteristics of her descendants.

The First Kennedys is well researched and written. Boston in the 1800s is the star of this family history. 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, Mariner Books and Neal Thompson for this ARC.

The Kennedy family has always been of interest to me, so right away I knew I wanted to read about the couple who started their family in America. I knew they were Irish, but had no idea that their ancestors lived through the famine and came to the United States with nothing but hope and determination.

Initially the Irish immigrants were not welcomed in Boston. Over the years, as more and more immigrated, they changed the demographics of Boston. Along with the demographic changes, came changes in education, housing and employment opportunities that gave the immigrants a much better way of life.

The Kennedy family is the perfect immigrant success story. Within three generations, they rose from poverty to great wealth and privilege. What is so amazing about this is that Bridget, the family matriarch and first young woman from the family to come from Ireland, managed to raise four children as a widow, gradually raising her earning potential as the children grew up. It truly seems she was the backbone of the family and a big reason her son Patrick was so successful.

The bulk of the story focuses on Patrick, who held many titles during his adult life. He is most known for his role in politics and as a successful businessman. Patrick also embraced his Irish Catholic heritage. He was a listener and very good with people.

I was impressed at the amount of information the author was able to find about Bridget during that time period, since there are so few records for women. It’s a shame there wasn’t more recorded of Bridget’s life, because she was really the person who cultivated the family’s future success.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Mariner Books for allowing me to read an advance copy. I am happy to offer my honest review.

Such an interesting book about the origins of the Kennedys. It started with Bridget and Patrick who emigrated from Ireland but focused mainly on PJ Kennedy, their son and John F's grandfather. It gave a lot of detail on PJ's political career and his rise to fame and how he started the Kennedy dynasty.
I read this on my e-reader and was very disappointed that the book was finished at 81%, the other 19% was 'Notes and Sources', I was hoping for more detailed info on the next generation, nonetheless it was a great read.
NetGalley very kindly allowed me to download and read a copy of this book for an honest review.
#TheFirstKennedys #NetGalley

The First Kennedys is a great book for anyone who enjoys the many facets of the Kennedy Family. This goes all the way back to the Irish roots and coming to America. Many new details about the Kennedys can be learned in this book.

I received an advance reading copy (arc) of this book from NetGalley.com in return for a fair review. A lot has been written about the Kennedy family beginning with Joseph Kennedy and his famous sons, but little is known about the Irish immigrants, Bridget Murphy and Patrick Kennedy, who left Ireland in the 1800s to come to America. Author Neal Thompson did a fine job describing what their lives must have been like during their sea voyage and the dire circumstances they lived in once they arrived in Boston. The Irish Catholics were not wanted and ostracized by the citizens who lived there. Despite the difficulties, Bridget worked as a maid and Patrick worked wherever he could until he died of consumption. That left Bridget a widow with three daughters and one son, P.J. She was made of true grit, however, and kept her family together finding work as a domesticate, hairdresser, and finally opening her very own grocery story. Her son took some time to find his way, but once he opened his own bar, he became a well-known and well-liked man in the community. He rose to prominence not only financially, but also became a political success paving the way for his politically-inclined descendents. It was an eye-opening read to see how one family rose from nothing to the greatest of heights. P.J. was a respected businessman who was very much loved by his patrons and his supporters. He was known for his kindness and honesty--something that was not passed on to his son, Joseph. If you think you know everything about the Kennedy clan, you probably don't know know much about Bridget and Patrick. It would be well worth your time to read this book and find out how it all began. You might be very surprised. Neal Thompson did a fine job researchng and writing their story.

Thompson analyzes the beginnings of the Kennedy family, tracing their immigration from Ireland to Boston. Much of the story is actually a generic history lesson, interspersed with the births and deaths of Kennedys. The author mentions so many extended relatives that it’s easy to get lost in the family stew of people. Bridget Kennedy, shouldered most of the burden for her family, as women so often did.
This book is a decent beginners look at the Kennedy family’s origination in America.

Bridget, the original Kennedy matriarch who escaped the Irish Potato Famine and came to Boston in her early 20s as a single woman had so many challenges in her life and she overcame them with grit and determination. Like most Irish women at the time, she first worked as a maid, but instead of staying in that role, she had the initiative to became a hairdresser and then a store owner. She was only married to Patrick Kennedy briefly before he died, leaving her with four surviving children to support. Even though her own life was difficult, she helped many of her fellow immigrants and raised loving and successful children. Her son, PJ was also very admirable in his dedication to his fellow Irish as well as the community in general. JFK took more after his grandfather and great-grandmother than his father Joe, who was a different can of worms.

While this book nominally deals with the first Kennedys, as the descendant of famine survivors myself, I loved all the detailed anecdotes that shed light on what life was like for the Irish during the Potato Famine and also once they got to the US.

An absolutely fascinating read.

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, then you know I read anything relating to the Kennedy family. They are a fascinating look at how an immigrant family rises to the pinnacle of success, the U.S. Presidency. It’s a story that rarely happens, and some will say it can only happen in the United States. When NetGalley, Neal Thompson, and Mariner Books provided me with a copy of The First Kennedys: The Humble Roots of an American Dynasty (Amazon), I couldn’t wait to find out more about the Kennedys who first arrived in America. All opinions given are my own.

Instead of focusing on Joe and Rose Kennedy as so many family biographies do, this goes back two generations to Joe Kennedy’s grandparents, Bridget and Patrick Kennedy, who came over from Ireland during the Great Potato Famine of the 1840’s. But because there is scant information about the two, rather we get an exhaustive look at life in both Ireland and Massachusetts during that time frame. It certainly helps paint a clearer picture of what Bridget and Patrick faced when they came to America. The discrimination against Irish was appalling, indeed against any Catholic immigrants, and the Kennedys were no exception.

Bridget faced a harder time, being a woman who had no skills other than housework and farming. But she had some family in the Boston area, and that helped. But work was hard to come by because so many Irish were coming to their shores. Soon enough Bridget got a job as a housekeeper.

Patrick Kennedy emigrated a few years later and became skilled as a barrel maker. It was a step or two above digging ditches, but there was still hardship. When Bridget and Patrick met and married, they were older than the average Irish men and women who married. And soon after, they started a family.

For ten years the family toiled and worked their butts off in menial jobs, and the family continued to grow. Then, the unthinkable happened. Patrick died, leaving Bridget to raise her children on her own. As is shown in the book, she did have some help from relations, but was largely on her own. Eventually, she scraped together the money (and was perhaps loaned some by those same family members) and bought a general goods store. It proved to be a lot of hard work, but let’s face it, everything Bridget had to do in her life was a lot of hard work. Somehow she made it work, and her young son P.J. learned a lot from her.

But P.J. was also a boy without a father and was sort of a juvenile delinquent. Somehow he straightened out enough to work on the docks and decide he was not going to spend his life doing that. With his mother’s help, he opened a saloon and proved adept at being a saloonkeeper. He also enjoyed the politicking that happened in saloons, and got involved in local elections. The Irish contingent in Boston was starting to make inroads in elected office, and P.J. was there at the beginning. While he did run for and was elected to office, for the most part he worked behind the scenes.

We’re also introduced to a young John Fitzgerald, another Irishman with a penchant for politics. He and P.J. worked together and at times at odds with one another in Massachusetts politics. It was John Fitzgerald’s daughter, Rose, who caught the eye of P.J.’s son, Joe, that continued the foray into politics with their children’s lives.

A solid entry into the Kennedy canon. If you want to more about the Kennedy family, or life for the Irish immigrants in the United States, this book is for you.

First and foremost, a large thank you to NetGalley, Neal Thompson, and Mariner Books for providing me with a copy of this publication, which allows me to provide you with an unbiased review.

Always one to eagerly explore anything related to the Kennedys, I reached for this biographical tome by Neal Thompson. Rather than rehashing much of the Kennedy drama, from Joe and Rose onwards, Thompson turns his focus on the early Kennedys who settled in Massachusetts and paved the way for future successes. Thompson’s attention to detail and great storytelling abilities left me intrigued to learn so much about the family that has become synonymous with power and political machinations.

Thompson takes the story back to its roots, the heart of Ireland. It is here that the Kennedys found their start, in a country that was battling for an identity and independent rule. While Britain was a force to be reckoned with, many Irish felt they were left to suffer and forced to cut corners just to survive. Poverty was rampant, with disease a close second, all of which left citizens to look across the ocean and dream of a better life.

Two of these Irish folk were Patrick and Bridget Kennedy, who had seen the horrors of their country and wanted something better. It was only when they were able to flee that things took a noticeable turn for the better, settling in and around Massachusetts, where many other Irish folk took up lodgings. They settled and started a family, which they hoped would allow them to show the next generation of Kennedys a better life. However, this was not quite the case right off the bat. While the Irish presence in East Boston was reasonable, control of the schools and community was still held firmly by the English, or at least groups with little desire for Irish influence. Patrick and Bridget both faced significant hardships and their children suffered at the hands of cruel educators, seeking to indoctrinate them into Protestant ways.

It was only after a family tragedy that the Kennedys saw something positive come into their lives, when Patrick John (PJ) was born. The elder Patrick died not long thereafter, forcing Bridget to raise her children as a widow and work to put food on the table. A sharp minded boy, PJ would quickly grow and found himself exploring Boston and all its facets. As Thompson explains, PJ Kennedy chose many professions as a young man, always striving to better himself, likening mirroring the life of his mother. PJ took much away from each job, making connections that would prove useful when he eventually found his calling in politics. Thompson uses the latter portion of the biography to explore how PJ Kennedy rose in the ranks of the Democratic Party in Massachusetts to become a household name. His wheeling and dealing around the stature did not go unnoticed and he was surely able to pass this passion along to his own son, Joseph, who is introduced in the last chapter of the tome.

Neal Thompson does well to explore some of the early roots of the Kennedy family, how they found themselves fleeing the horrors of Ireland while never forgetting their past. The hard work and determination that each member of the family showed helped strengths the resolve the next generation and kept the flame alive for those Kennedy heirs many have come to know so well. While Camelot and all the glory of the Kennedy name might be waning over the last few decades, there is something about this family and their roots that has always drawn me in, and likely still will as long as well-developed books are written about them.

While I know little of Neal Thompson or his past writing, I was pleasantly surprised at how well this book flowed. A great deal fo information helped shape the narrative of the piece and gave me some needed framework to better understand how grit, determination, and political acumen entered the Kennedy gene pool. Now, with this exploration of the early generation, I have a better idea. Well-paced chapters, full of information, kept me wanting to learn more and left me eager to connect the dots. Written in such a way that any Kennedy fan could read it, without needing significant backstory to piece things together, Thompson makes the journey all the more exciting. I’ll definitely have a look for more of Thompson’s writing in the coming months.

Kudos, Mr. Thompson, for a great piece that has renewed my love for all things Kennedy.

Thank you to Netgalley for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review. This book is a must read for anyone who is interested in the Kennedy or the Irish immigration. It’s obvious how much research went into this book based on all the details that were included. I was surprised that so much of the book dealt with the general Irish in Boston. I assumed the book would be purely about the Kennedys, but enjoyed learning about the history of Boston.

I really loved this account of John F Kennedy’s ancestors as they traveled to Boston to escape the Irish Famine during the 1840s and struggled to survive and then flourish as they made a place for themselves in their new world.It tells the story of his great grandmother Bridget who becomes a widow with 4 children and must fight for survival after her husband dies young.Very interesting account of the indomitable Will of America’s first family.

The First Kennedys
Neal Thompson

Release date: 22 Feb 2022

Description:
"Their Irish ancestry was a hallmark of the Kennedys’ initial political profile, as JFK leveraged his working-class roots to connect with blue-collar voters. Today, we remember this iconic American family as the vanguard of wealth, power, and style rather than as the descendants of poor immigrants. Here at last, we meet the first American Kennedys, Patrick and Bridget, who arrived as many thousands of others did following the Great Famine - penniless and hungry. Less than a decade after their marriage in Boston, Patrick’s sudden death left Bridget to raise their children single-handedly. Her rise from housemaid to shop owner in the face of rampant poverty and discrimination kept her family intact, allowing her only son P.J. to become a successful saloon owner and businessman. P.J. went on to become the first American Kennedy elected to public office—the first of many."

Review:
Not just about the Kennedys but about the plight of Irish immigration in the mid-19th century. Most of my ancestors were from Ireland and came to the United States just after the Famine so this was very interesting to me. As a genealogist, I liked how the author used census records as well as other previously unreleased records to compile this book. Highly recommend.

Thank you NetGalley for providing this book in return for an honest review. I went into the reading experiencing knowing very little about either the Kennedy lineage or Irish immigration to America, yet came away with a vivid and thoroughly nuanced perception for both. Thompson write succinctly though also with a unwavering charm for the story of the lives of those he writes about and as such breathes life into characters long dead, unknown to the reader and with sometimes very little information to work with - I think this shows the talent in the writing and research therefore, in making the likes of Bridget so known and tangible. The only slight mar on my enjoyment of the book was the heavily political segments do not have the same energy and flow as the rest of the book, feeling more densely packed with characters and sluggish, sometimes veering into confusing. Despite this it doesn’t take away from the accomplishments of the book overall and I thoroughly enjoyed it, prompting me to further interest in its field.

A potential reader might well see this book on the shelf and think, "Just what the world needs-another book about the Kennedys!" Understandable...but this book covers different territory. The First Kennedys tells the stories of the Kennedys who left Ireland during the potato famine and emigrated to America. Each of the segments of the story is fascinating, heart-breaking, and relevant to nearly every American descended from poor immigrants. Mr. Thompson has created a masterwork of history based squarely on years of painstaking research which is documented in the extensive notes and bibliography, both of which will be of great use to future researchers. Where he can't verify something positively, he says so, explaining what the possibilities are and where the gap in source material lies.
The book focuses primarily on Bridget Kennedy, Patrick Kennedy, and their son, PJ Kennedy, the great grandparents and grandfather of the future president, John Kennedy. Bridget and Patrick each came to Boston in the mid-nineteenth century on "coffin ships" from Ireland and survived by hard physical labor and the support of friends and family who had also emigrated. The life of the poor in Boston is a book in itself and the author tells the story without melodrama; however, the reader will likely be moved simply by the facts of these people's lives. The book does not go far into the story of Joseph and Rose Kennedy and their children, for that is well-trodden ground.
I recommend this book whole-heartedly.

I appreciate the publisher allowing me to read this book. If your interested in the Kennedy family this is a must read for you, very well written.

Thanks to NetGalley, Mariner Books and the author Neal Thompson, for the opportunity to read this very well researched narrative about the first Kennedys. The book had great detail, perhaps more than I was expecting to read, but comprehensive.

I probably would give it 3.5 stars but rounded up to 4 for the historical value and the research done.I especially enjoyed reading about Joe Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald as children, and their fathers' long association with each other.

A very in depth picture of a particular Irish American family in Boston and how similar their origins were to others at that time.

An incredibly well-researched read about the beginnings of the Kennedy family, starting with Patrick and Bridget. I learned so much about their struggles, successes and challenges coming to America from Ireland. At times, this read much like a history book, but I enjoyed reading about the roots of the Kennedy family from the very beginning - all of which is in very great detail.