John F. Fitzgerald him the nickname 'Honey Fitz'. His daughter Rose married Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., a son of his political rival P. J. Kennedy. In old age, Fitzgerald helped his grandson John F. Kennedy to win his first seat in congress. John Francis Fitzgerald was born in the North End of Boston, to Irish businessman/politician Thomas Fitzgerald of Bruff, County Limerick, and Rosanna Cox of County Cavan. He was the fourth of twelve children. Both of his sisters, Ellen and Mary, and his eldest brother, Michael, died in infancy. Fitzgerald's brother Joseph had severe brain damage from malaria and barely functioned. Only
F. Scott Fitzgerald "my mother lost her other two children ... I think I started then to be a writer." His father, Edward Fitzgerald, was of Irish and English ancestry, and had moved to St. Paul from Maryland after the American Civil War, and was described as "a quiet gentlemanly man with beautiful Southern manners." His mother was Mary "Molly" McQuillan Fitzgerald, the daughter of an Irish immigrant who had made his fortune in the wholesale grocery business. Edward Fitzgerald's first cousin once removed Mary Surratt was hanged in 1865 for conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Scott Fitzgerald spent the first decade of