The First Kennedys by Neal Thompson

Author:Neal Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

16

P.J. the Democrat

EAST BOSTON’S WARD bosses kept hearing the name P.J. Kennedy, seeing it in newsprint for reasons other than the required public listing for a liquor license application.

There were the boat races in which P.J. led East Boston’s rowing crews to victory against other wards. There was the work he and his roommate, Nick Flynn, had been doing for the Excelsior Associates social club, assisting with concerts and literary talks and grand balls at Maverick Hall. At one such affair, P.J. served as assistant director and watched proudly as a hundred couples danced at “one of the most agreeable affairs of the season,” as the Boston Globe described it. There were his efforts as a “guard” for the Hancock and English Club, which was trying to drum up voter support for the Democratic presidential candidate, Winfield Scott Hancock, who in 1880 would lose by a hair to James Garfield.

Some ward leaders got to know P.J. at his beer hall, where he’d still occasionally tend bar, talking politics as he poured them lagers. Or they saw him marching with other Democrats in the St. Patrick’s Day parades or working the docks and the streets at election time, reminding people to vote—and for whom. Some had probably gotten to know P.J. at his mother’s shop, where she surely talked up her hardworking son.

One Democratic leader in particular took a shine to P.J. Daniel F. Kelly was the low-key but powerful chairman of the Democratic Ward and City Committee for Ward 2—one of the city’s twenty-five electoral wards and, with the adjacent (but more Republican) Ward 1, comprised Boston’s so-called island wards. Kelly suggested to his fellow Democrats that they start giving young Kennedy more responsibilities, a chance to prove his worth to the party.

Other Ward 2 operators also took P.J. under their wing: William A. Foss, a blacksmith turned Common Council member who now ran the East Boston ferries; Cornelius Doherty, a coppersmith turned liquor dealer turned Common Council member, who ran Boston’s water department; and William J. Burke, a boilermaker turned Common Council member and state representative, now the city’s elevator and building inspector. Each represented the ascent of an immigrant—from tradesman to political operative to holder of elected office—a trajectory that P.J. admired. These men opened their doors, welcomed P.J. in. They invited him to speak before local dignitaries at Lyceum Hall, where he stood nervously at the podium and “read some resolutions” before the evening’s activities, according to the Boston Transcript. He was not the most inspiring of public speakers, he and his mentors would learn. His skills shined brighter behind the scenes, as a community organizer and people manager. He put together a fundraiser for the Irish National Land League, also at Lyceum Hall, where 150 couples dined and danced past midnight. The next day’s Boston Globe praised P.J.’s “efficient” efforts.

These and other civic and political activities had a few things in common: they occurred within a block of P.J.’s saloon, they aimed to rebuild East Boston’s

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