Opportunity to explore the earliest years of the Kennedy Familys life in america with our distinguished guests this evening. Much of Neil Thompsons research took place at the Kennedy Library archives and we are very pleased to learn more about his work in the lives of bridget and Patrick Kennedy this evening. Im now delighted to introduce tonights speakers. We are so glad to welcome Neil Thompson to the Kennedy Library virtually. A journalist and and the author of six acclaimed books. He has written for the New York Times the Washington Post the wall street journal esquire outside and numerous other media outlets. His new book is the first kennedys the humble roots of an american dynasty. Im also delighted to welcome to the library virtually our moderator for this evening christine camille. Christine is professor of history and the founding director of irelands. Irelands Great Hunger Institute at quinnipiac university. She is published extensively on irelands great hunger and the irish abolition movement. Among her numerous awards and honors. She has been named one of the top educators in irish america. And now to help us welcome our special guests. Im delighted to introduce dr. Lisha moore the consul general of ireland new england to stay a few words over to alicia. Thank you so much rachel, and im really delighted that the consulate is once again working with our good friends in the Kennedy Library. A couple of days ago President Biden issued a proclamation declaring march to be Irish American heritage month and it outlines not just irelands deep links with america, but also the really vast contribution that americans of Irish Heritage have made in this country. So i think it is really fitting that today this event explores the humble irish origins of one of americas most prolific political families, and im delighted that were going to hear from author Neil Thompson about his new and very Interesting Research on the familys origins and also that were going to hear from somebody who is we just heard is a renowned expert on on irish history professor pinelli. Um, i am very happy that this event marks one of the first of many that the consulate is going to celebrate with our friends and in you know in new england to mark st. Patricks day, and im especially happy that since i first arrived in boston, it will be my first chance to celebrate with many people here in person and this month, but i have to say that this joy is it is tempered by by some heartbreak because of the events that we are witnessing at present and reflecting on irish history for a moment when professor at portland president kennedy visited ireland back in 1963. He remarked that aid of his great grandparents came from ireland and his ancestors left a land of oppression and the connection between ireland and america. Its its in many ways. Its been the story of americas long support for ireland and its struggle for selfdetermination, and im just very str. Today that we are watching scenes that are truly horrific as another european country. Ukraine is struggling for its freedom and its right to selfdetermination and you know, ireland as i think many of people watching will know is its a country that knows from its history the value of solidarity and support from other friends abroad not least from this country. So i do want to take this opportunity to acknowledge in a small way and to express irelands strong support and solidarity for the people of ukraine. I can get its fitting, you know, given this discussion and given the the talk that we are going to have this evening on on irish history. So and thank you all very much. Thank you very much to the Kennedy Library and to our speaker and our moderator and everybody who is who has joined us for this special event, and im delighted to hand over now to our moderator professor camille. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Liz and rachel of the Candy Library for hosting this event alicia. Thank you for your lovely words, and if i can just follow on by what youre saying because many of the famine emigrants who came to this country in the 1840s and 1850s were economic and political refugees and what will witnessing at the moment is again the flight of political and economic refugees and my heart goes out to them. I hope the situation comes to an end soon, but tonight is a more joyous occasion escape perhaps for 90 minutes, and i want to start off by saying congratulations to neil on this fantastic book. I read it within 24 hours and i literally couldnt put it down a few coffee breaks. And its beautifully recent its accessible and it tells the story that deserves to be told and to be better known so i wouldnt say happy Saint Patricks month as alicia has already intimated you we no longer can celebrate Saint Patrick in one day. We need a whole month to celebrate him, but for me, my favorites are saints is of course, saint bridget who until recently has really been written out of history ignored and im delighted that this year island actually celebrated and acknowledge sink bridget state the first of february were hoping it will be a National Holiday and it just seems as we remember saint bridges it brings us full circle to remembering another bridget who has been in some ways written out of history being invisible being overshadowed by the men in her life. And i really want to commend you neil for the fact that you put bridges murphy at the front and center of the early kennedys and could you perhaps explain why you did somewhat process took you to wanting to learn more about the early kennedys . Yeah. Thanks christine. Thanks for being here with me. Thanks for doing this. I wanted to echo my thanks to the staff at the the jfk library to rachel for the wonderful introduction to liz and just an early shout out. Ill probably make others later in the in the program to the staff at the archives at the Kennedy Library who have been just heroes to me helped this book enormously and just have a lot of admiration and respect and gratitude for them. Thanks. Also to lisa for being here and for the kind introduction and then i would second and and support the words from from alicia and from you christine and support of the people of whats happening right now . So as you said christine the irish were you know, they experienced their own crumbling of a country and their own necessary escape to safety and and you know a place where they might find economic means that they werent able to find at home. This is a story that has spoken to me and nagged at me for more than 20 years. I want to talk about bridget mostly, but i i want to briefly say that this story my interest in this story goes back to 1999 when John F Kennedy jr. Died, and i was a newspaper reporter at the time. I was covering that story for the Baltimore Sun magazine. I went up to hyannis for it and staked out the Kennedy Compound there and with a bunch of other reporters and was in a bar when they found the wreckage and the bartender who had given me jameson that i was sipping when the news came that they had. Record she burst into tears and said she felt like she had lost a family member. And you know, i i so ive im half irish, i grew up Irish Catholic 16 years of catholic education. Im not unfamiliar with the kennedys and bits of their history, but i never necessarily had an interest in writing a book about them or going deeper into their history or understanding more never knew about bridget until i started this project. But that incident with John F Kennedy jr. Which was followed by my drive south to my home in baltimore, and i passed through my home state of new jersey and came within a couple of miles of the cemetery where my irish immigrant grandparents bridget and patrick are buried and something about that. Contrast between between the kennedys who were at that time so famous so beloved. So tragic such a mythic epic saga around that family and then my poor grandparents. Something something got triggered in me and i started to appreciate more deeply my irish roots and heritage started to develop a deeper curiosity about my grandmothers history where she came from what life was like for her when she came to america, i would later learn that she was a maid just like Bridget Kennedy was Bridget Murphy kennedy. But i couldnt quite figure out. That point forward for many years exactly how to find a way into a story about the early kennedys what i wanted to understand was where did they come from who came to America First what was life like for them when they got here, you know, i know were not always the most welcoming country to incoming immigrants. We say we are many of us believe we are and should be but its not always the case and it wasnt the case for the incoming irish. So i wanted to find a story that told many stories. In fact, i wanted to explore the origins of the kennedy. Family in america. I wanted to understand irish immigration in america. I wanted to understand life for irish immigrants in the 1800s, which is when bridget came here. Other books kept getting in the way and it wasnt until 201617 when we started having very different more aggressive more angry conversations about immigration immigration in this country where i realized i have to figure this story out. I have to go deeper and at some point along this long journey, i discovered that, you know, Bridget Murphy oh came here in the during the potato famine met and married Patrick Kennedy and decided thats how i want to start my story. I want to bring Bridget Murphy kennedy to life and show it life was like for her and the slums of east boston. Were trying to raise her kid in a atmosphere that hated her kind. Hated the irish hated the catholics. How did she do it . What was her life like and how did she create a life in a family that gave us the kennedys that we know today . So thats where it all began. As far as finding bridget and deciding i had to do whatever it took to bring her to life. Okay, so almost two tragedies one the death of Young Kennedy and then the second the tragedy of the famine and as you said that was the trigger for so much emigration. We know between 1846 and 1856 approximately two Million People left island. And what makes ireland irish immigration remarkable is increasingly more women than men left island. That is very very unusual market bridget remarkable. So were just one of those women the fact you found her. So would you like to take us back to wexford were in a sense bridget began and her story that leads her to take that decision in 1848. Yeah. Yeah. She she was born and raised on a small family farm in a Little Village called cluna in county works for and like many of these small family farms. They had very little, you know, they all lived in one or two buildings, you know, whitewashed stone. Called huts if you will in some cases and what i think i think its interesting you raise that point about more irish women coming to america than the men because i think it says a lot about what life was like for them in ireland. If she had if the pet if the famine had not happened life would not have been great for her. Anyway, you know, and she might have wanted to escape anyway, you know her prospects were stay on the family farm and work for her parents if if one of her siblings, you know married first and the dowry went to one of her sisters or find some man in town and maybe become a farm wife the rest of her life. That was you know, i described life and in ireland at that time, it was peasant life if you lived in the country, which she did so the prospects werent great and then the famine hits and it devastated that country, you know this more than anyone youve written about it more eloquently and beautifully than anyone and and ill and ill in confess when i started this project. I thought well, how am i going up to . Books like yours and and uh research and and achievements like yours. Theres been so much written about the famine, but i really wanted to find a way to tell the story through bridgets eyes. So i think her family didnt suffer as much as some others. They were tenant farmers. They didnt own their land. They had to pay rent to it absentee English Landlord who actually owned the land that they were on was the case for many many, you know thousands of not millions of irish farms and farmers so they had to grow crops to pay their landlord and then they subsisted on potatoes primarily that was the made up the bulk of their of their source of food when the famine hit and devastated all of those crops. It just ruined that country economically and culturally and in other ways. So at some point bridget, we dont know exactly how the decision was made who made the decision. I like to think that bridget raised her hand and said, okay, ill go you know, i think you see in the tenacity that we see in her character later that she was probably someone who was willing to make this take this risk and take on this adventure to cross the atlantic to go to a new land to set up a sort of a beachhead of sorts for her family and start things anew knowing no one over there. There were some cousins who were going over around the same time, but you know, i think it speaks to her character and the character of many of the other irish women who went numbers as you said more so than the men. Going to a new country alone on these incredibly dangerous ships as you know, they were called coffin ships because they sank they burned they were full of disease. There wasnt enough food to go around. Maybe they would take four to six weeks to cross the atlantic. Maybe they would take and eight to ten weeks depending on whether it was a treacherous dangerous often deadly journey. I describe one emigrade writing in his journal about the dead bodies that were thrown overboard splash splash splash all day long. So that was her. The beginning of her adventure was escaping ireland crossing this making this deadly crossing and then showing up in a country that didnt really want her. So remarkable character incredibly strong and ambitious and tenacious, but she gets to america and then her journey is only just begun from that point. Its you know, as we as we discover in the book and and well talk about it more. She had hardship at every turn and overcame those hardships. Okay, and youve talked about the coffin ships, which were very famous. Perhaps could you talk more about the journey because most people went to liverpool it wasnt even a direct journey. We know most of the voyages were unregulated and then when we know when people got to boston they were often isolated. They were treated. I mean an antagonistic way. Could you talk more about the journey itself though . Yeah, it was terrifying and theres a lot of material thats available about what other irish emma grace experienced during that journey many of them went to as he said liverpool england first, that was their first stop. They took a smaller ship got there waited for their larger ship to prepare to leave or in many cases. They didnt have a ticket to cross so they would end up in liverpool which was overwhelmed by tens if not hundreds of thousands of irish refugees trying to find a ship to take them west in most cases to the us primarily but also to canada and liverpool is a also a dangerous and deadly place, you know, full of disease and these subsub street basement apartments that were available for rent for a few days or a lot of scammers on the prowl trying to trick the irish into buying a ticket that was expired or to give them their money to exchange it for currency and they would lose all their money and not be able to buy their ticket to go to america. I mean there were trip wires every step and so she navigated that treacherous scene in this giant smoky city of industry. That was you know hundred times larger than the village that she grew up in and she was almost instantly surrounded by you know, many hundreds of times more people than she came into contact with on a given day. Its just astounding to think of the shock to that. It must have been to her to end up in this seating teaming city of will and try and find her way to the Ticket Office and find her way to the docs where the ship was leaving and then as you said and youve written about the crossing itself was was horrific the british ships were more dangerous and less regulated than the american ships. You know, ill call out that we dont know with a hundred percent certainty which ship she was on and i explained this in the book bridget and murphy were two of the most common names island. So even though there are records showing passengers on many of these ships and we in the book i narrow it down to it two ships that were probably one of one or the other that she crossed on both of them had a history of wreckages and deaths and tragic crossings. So regardless of which ship she was on we know it was it was a risky dangerous journey, you know, women gave birth during the the crossing which could again four to six or more weeks many women lost their their newborn children on those crossings and the babies were wrapped into sail cloth and tossed overboard often there wasnt enough food. There wasnt enough water. The people the immigrants were crammed below decks into these, you know stacked multiple cots high and squeezed two two people to one to one bad sharing like two feet of space for two people four weeks and weeks at a time. So it was a terrible way to escape a tragedy that was be following your country and it says a lot about what she wanted next in her life that she was willing to take that risk and take on that terrible journey and then show up in this place on the other side where i describe one of the refugees stepping off the boat at the docks in east boston and seeing a early teeming seeding seen