The forgotten Kennedy: JFK's great-grandmother Bridget Murphy's roots lie in New Ross

The remarkable Bridget Murphy, JFK’s great grandmother, has been almost entirely erased from the famous family’s history, writes Neal Thompson

Joseph Patrick Kennedy with his sisters Loretta and Margaret, c. 1902. Picture: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

The first time I heard the name Bridget Murphy, I was in the dirt-paved parking area of the Kennedy Homestead, in Dunganstown, south of New Ross, the birthplace of Patrick Kennedy, great-grandfather to John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy and their clan.

I learned that day, in 2006, that Bridget Murphy had left Ireland around the same time as Patrick, whom she married in Boston in 1949, and had grown up on a farm a few miles away, in Cloonagh. All that remained was a patch of grass, trees and some rubble, not tourist-attraction ‘Homestead’ for the matriarch of America’s royal family.