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President John F Kennedy

Ancestry of President
John F. Kennedy

35th President of the United States

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Most presidents whose ancestry can be traced back to New England have a number of relationships with other presidents, Mayflower passengers, Salem witches, movies stars, and even royalty. President John F. Kennedy is clearly one of New England's most famous sons whose entire American ancestry is located in New England, or more specifically Massachusetts. However, President John F. Kennedy is clearly an exception.

All 8 of JFK's great-grandparents immigrated to Massachusetts from Ireland during the middle of the 19th century. They were a part of a wave of Irish immigrants that had fled the Great Potato Famine when a fungus spread across Ireland destroying successive crops. They arrived in Boston where a great struggle was underway between two major groups of people.

One the one side, there were those whose ancestors were the first European immigrants to settle the land, mostly English Protestants, and they tried to desperately guard what they had.

On the other side were the immigrants, many of which were Irish Catholic, who struggled for their part of the American dream. They lived in slums and were treated as 2nd class citizens. It was from these slums that the JFK's ancestors rose to become one of America's most famous and politically powerful families.

For John F. Kennedy, his famous kin were the immediate family around him.

Famous Kin of President John F. Kennedy

Please note: The ancestor reports on this website have been compiled from hundreds of different sources, many over 100 years old. These sources are attached to each ancestor so that you can personally judge their reliability. As with any good genealogical research, if you discover a link to your own family tree, consider it a starting point for further research. It is always preferable to locate primary records where possible. FamousKin.com cannot and does not guarantee the accuracy and reliability of these sources.

Explanation of the Ahnentafel Numbering System

The ancestor reports on FamousKin.com use 'Ahnentafel' numbering. This means that the starting person is always number 1. That person's parents are always numbers 2 and 3. Each ancestor's parents are calculated by multiplying their number by 2 for the father, and adding one to that result to get the mother. Except for the starting individual, males are always even numbers, and females are always odd numbers. To determine a person's child, divide their number by 2 and drop any remainder.