John F. Fitzgerald 1946, when John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy decided to run for Congress, 83-year-old Honey Fitz helped him plan his campaign strategy. At the victory celebration, Fitzgerald danced an Irish jig, sang "Sweet Adeline," and predicted that his grandson would someday occupy the White House. Shortly after his election to the presidency, President Kennedy renamed the presidential yacht the "Honey Fitz" in honor of his maternal grandfather. On September 18, 1889, Fitzgerald married his second cousin Mary Josephine "Josie" Hannon. She was a daughter of Michael Hannon and Mary Ann Fitzgerald. On October 2, 1950, Fitzgerald died in Boston at the age
Henry Fitz and grinding glass. By the 1840s Fitz had turned his amateur astronomer hobby into a successful business building telescopes. Fitz pioneered techniques of correcting poor quality glass which made him one of the first important American telescope makers. He was the first American to make "very large" professional refracting telescopes. Fitz made the largest refractor telescopes in America, five different times. Fitz made forty percent of all the telescopes sold in the United States from 1840 to 1855. He also manufactured eighty percent of all astronomical telescopes made in the United States at this time. American made telescopes were significantly