Notable People
Partrick Joseph Kennedy

   "Rarely have the Kennedys' summers and year round residency at Winthrop been disscussed in the scores of books written about this famous family. Few people know that Winthrop was the first Hyannisport. Patrick Kennedy and family began summering in Winthop c.1912, initially living at 159 Locust Street ....
   The move to Washington avenue c.1915 was a step up from the charming but modestly scaled housing of the Floyd development to the stylish and substantial residences of Washington Avenue. 97 Washington Avenue became Patrick Joseph Kennedy's permanent, year round residence.

   Patrick Joseph Kennedy was born in 1858, the youngest of four children. At age 22, he gathered his savings as well as loans from his mother and three sisters and bought a run down saloon in the Haymarket area of Boston. Before he reached 30, he was able to buy a second tavern across the street from the East Boston ship yards. He became a partner in the old Maverick House at Maverick Square, East Boston and in 1885, opened his own liquor importation business, P.J. Kennedy and Co.
   In 1886, he was elected, to the State Senate, a feat made possible by the fact that Irish immigrants out numbered Yankees for the first time that year. He served three terms in the Massachusetts State Senate.
   In 1886, he married Mary Augusta Hickey, the daughter of a prosperous businessman. Their first child, Joseph Patrick Kennedy was born on September 6, 1888. By the early 1900's, Patrick Joseph Kennedy was a major political force in Boston and was a member of the so called Board of Strategy which wrested power from the BossTweed-like Martin Lomasney. By the time the Kennedys bought 97 Washington Avenue, their son Joe was not long out of Harvard University."

..."Over the next years, as his sisters married, P.J. saved his money, looking for a way to solidify his families tenous hold on respectabilty. Not long after his twenty-second birthday, he heard of a run-down saloon for sale in a dilapited section of Haymarket Square. With loans from his mother and sisters, he bought the place and went into business himself."

..."With hard work, P.J.'s tavern prospered, wand within several years, while he was still in his early twenties, he was able to into two more -- one by the docks, the other in a famous Boston hostelry, the Maverick House. Once again his willingness to work hard and his attention to detail paid off: before he was thirty, by pooling his resources he establisjed his own enterprise, a liquor-importing business that brought in fine liquors from Europe and South America."

..."Having served five terms as a state representative, P.J. Kennedy was elected to the Massachusetts Senate. He then became city wire commissionerm responsible for electrifing Boston. P.J. was now only powerful politically, he was wealthy. He invested in Suffolk Coal Company, and four year's after Joe's birth. P.J. invaded the most scarosanct territory of the Brahmins, the banks. P.J. Kennedy became an incorporator and vice president of Columbia Trust Company."

"The Hickeys were every bit as well-known in East Boston as the Kennedys. Joseph's maternal uncle Charlie Hickey was elected mayor of nearby Brockton; Uncle Jim was a Bsoton police captain; Uncle John was a doctor in Winthrop."

"P.J. graciously accepted defeat but was so humilated by it that he pulled up stakes and, after a lifetime of service to and residence in East Boston, moved the family to Winthrop, Massachusetts. He was far from destitute and would continue for the rest of his life to live well on the income he received from his coal, real estate, liquor importing, and banking businesses. The new family house in Winthrop was spacious and attractive.""