In June 1963, President John F. Kennedy visited his ancestral home in County Wexford, where many of his relatives, some distant, were found to be living.
Prior to the President’s trip in 1963, Alan Whicker from the BBC spoke to as many Kennedys as he could to see what they had to say about their connection to the famous man himself.
These folks were found in places in both Counties Limerick and Wexford, which boast the greatest concentration of Kennedys who stayed behind in the old country.
Read More: New research tells of JFK's Irish roots in Limerick, Fermanagh, Cork and Clare
Limerick, as opposed to Wexford, had the most number of Kennedy’s great-grandparents, with three in total from his mother’s side: Mary Ann Fitzgerald, Michael Hannon, and Thomas Fitzgerald. The Fitzgeralds had come from a small town called Bruff in the eastern part of Limerick, but Hannon had come from Lough Gur.
His great-grandfather, Thomas Fitzgerald, emigrated to the United States in the midst of the Irish famine of 1848 and eventually settled in Boston, Massachusetts.
His Wexford connection is not as strong, given that only two of his great-grandparents came from the county. They were Patrick Kennedy of Dunganstown and Bridget Murphy from Owenduff.
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