Search for Kerry's roots finds surprising history

Michael Kranish, Globe Staff,

Boston Globe, February 2, 2003

For years, US Senator John Forbes Kerry had sought to know the true story of his immigrant grandfather, Frederick A. Kerry, the patriarch who established the family in Boston and then mysteriously took his own life.

The senator searched phone books and the Internet and quizzed his cousins, but he was only able to learn fragments of family history.

The story, it turns out, began in a small town in the Czech Republic that once was part of the Austrian empire. Birth records there show that Frederick A. Kerry was born as Fritz Kohn to Jewish parents, according to a genealogy specialist hired by the Globe. Kohn changed his name to Kerry around 1902 and emigrated to the United States in 1905, eventually moving to Boston.

In 1921, Frederick Kerry went to the Copley Plaza Hotel, entered a washroom, and shot himself in the head. It was front-page news. His filing in Probate Court listed him as practically broke.

While Senator Kerry said he knew his grandfather had committed suicide, he said he knew no details until he was shown a copy of a 1921 article last week.

''How many times have I walked into that hotel ...'' said an emotional Kerry, his voice trailing off. He said it was the first time he had talked publicly about the suicide.

Kerry said he learned about 15 years ago that his grandmother was Jewish. That led to years of unsuccessful efforts to learn more about his grandfather's roots and his own.

''This is amazing; that is fascinating to me,'' Kerry said, in reference to the ancestral records. ''This is incredible stuff. I think it is more than interesting; it is a revelation.''

''It has a big emotional impact, because it obviously raises [questions]: I want to know what happened, why did they do this, what were they thinking, what was the thought process, and why, once they got over here, why they never talked about it,'' he said.

As Kerry runs for president, he is in many ways on a voyage of self-discovery. He said he had expected there would be intense interest in his life, going beyond the usual curiosity about his Boston Brahmin maternal roots in the Forbes and Winthrop families, two of New England's most prominent clans.

Kerry acknowledged that some voters in Massachusetts, the nation's most Irish-American state, may have had the impression that he had Irish roots. He said that he knew of no Irish ancestry and that he had always tried to correct misstatements whenever he learned about them.

Numerous publications, including the Globe, have stated that Kerry is Irish-American.

''I'm sure some people see the name and say, 'Hey, I think it's this or that,'' but I've been clear as a bell,'' Kerry said. ''I've always been absolutely straight up front about it.''

Kerry spokeswoman Kelley Benander said the senator has corrected any misstatement he became aware of. When she was read three examples from Globe clippings in which the senator was misidentified as Irish-American, she repeated that Kerry had corrected misstatements when he read or heard them.
Kerry ''has never indicated to anyone that he was Irish and corrected people over the years who assumed he was,'' Benander said.

''It is certainly an understandable misimpression,'' she said. ''His name was Kerry, he represents Massachusetts, and he attended the St. Patrick's Day breakfasts, like everyone else in public life in the state.''

Kerry is a practicing Catholic who said he disagrees with his church on some issues, such as abortion rights.

He said he learned from a relative about 15 years ago that his grandmother, born as Ida Lowe, was Jewish, a fact, he said, that had intrigued him and that he had shared with dozens of people.

But he said he had no knowledge about his grandfather's origin, other than the vague idea that he was from Austria. He said he had long tried to learn more, at one point stopping in Vienna and trying to reach Kerrys listed in the phone book, in a fruitless effort to trace his roots.

Kerry's genealogy was traced through a variety of means: immigration records from Ellis Island, naturalization records on file in Illinois, death and probate records in Massachusetts, and a birth registry from the former Austrian empire.

The immigration records showed that Frederick Kerry arrived in the United States in 1905, and the naturalization records showed that he was born in the town formerly known as Bennisch, in the Austrian empire, which today is Horni Benesov in the Czech Republic.

Felix Gundacker, director of the Institute for Historical Family Research in Vienna, was hired by the Globe to examine the Austrian records, which he translated from the original German. He found that birth records for Bennisch include a notation for a person named Fritz Kohn.

The birth record says: ''In the year 1873, on May 10th, was born Fritz Kohn, a legal son of Benedikt Kohn, master brewer in Bennisch, House 224, and his wife, Mathilde, daughter of Jakob Frankel, royal dealer in Oberlogau in Prussia.'' The record has a notation that Fritz Kohn changed his name to Frederick Kerry on March 17, 1902. That record does not mention a baptism. But the family says Frederick Kerry was a Catholic, and he is buried at a Catholic cemetery in Brookline.

Frederick Kerry's 1921 death certificate in Boston lists his parents as Benedict Kerry of Austria and Mitaldia Franckel of Austria, the same parents as listed in Fritz Kohn's birth record, although the father is called Kohn in Austria.
Gundacker said he was ''1,000 percent certain'' that Kerry was born to a Jewish family, because of the way the birth was listed in the church records, on an addendum page listing Jewish families.

Gundacker's methodology was supported by Robert Friedman of the Center for Jewish History's Genealogy Institute in New York City. Friedman said that it was common for Jewish births to be recorded in Catholic records during that time.

''The Jewish rabbi would keep records, but they were not necessarily officially recognized by the government, until the advent of stricter supervision over Jewish record keeping,'' Friedman said.

''There was a time when the Jewish records would be entered by the Catholic authorities,'' he said. ''Assimilation and conversion were common in Austria-Hungary during that time period.''

Upon hearing about his grandfather's birth records, Kerry brought up his grandfather's suicide. ''My father, when I asked about him about it, said my grandfather took his own life,'' he said. ''This suddenly may shed some light on that in some ways.'' Kerry said he knew nothing of the death, beyond the basic fact that Frederick Kerry committed suicide.

Unbeknownst to the senator, the story was front-page news in many Boston papers, including the Globe, the Telegram, and the Transcript. Kerry was shown a copy of the Globe story from Nov. 23, 1921 with the headline: ''Shot Himself in Copley Plaza - F. A. Kerry, Merchant, Died Very Soon.'' The story described how Kerry, ''a man prominent in the shoe business,'' walked into the Copley Plaza Hotel at 11:30 a.m., went into a washroom, pulled out a revolver, and shot himself. ''Only one bullet was fired, and the man died instantly,'' the story said.

Given a copy of the article, Kerry studied the story for several minutes in disbelief. ''God, that's awful,'' he said. ''Oh, God, that's awful. That is kind of heavy.''

A few minutes later, Kerry said: ''That explains a lot. It connects the dots. My dad was sort of painfully remote and shut off and angry about the loss of his sister and the lack of a father.'' His father's sister had polio and cancer.

After seeing the newspaper story, Kerry said, he understood better why his father, the diplomat Richard Kerry, may have been so angry about the circumstances of Frederick Kerry's death.

Articles from the Globe and other newspapers from 1921 included speculation about the reason for the suicide. A number of articles noted that Kerry suffered from severe asthma, while one suggested the possibility of financial difficulties.

Kerry said he found it difficult to believe that asthma would prompt a suicide, adding that he has always believed that his grandfather left behind money for his grandmother, which partly formed the basis for some of the family's wealth. His grandfather, he said, was a prominent businessman who ''helped reorganize Sears, Roebuck.''

But some records suggest he had fallen on hard times. On Nov. 15, 1921, Frederick Kerry wrote his will. Six days later, he killed himself. A Probate Court record provides the most intriguing clue. It said that Frederick Kerry left behind a Cadillac, some clothes, two stock shares worth $200 from the Boston Chamber of Commerce, $25 in cash, and ''shares of stock in J.L. Walker Co. and Spencer Shoe Manufacturing Co. - worthless.'' Newspaper stories from the time said that Kerry's business ventures included Spencer.

Moreover, the records show that Frederick Kerry's debts nearly equaled his meager assets. While that would suggest that Frederick Kerry was broke at the time of the suicide, Senator Kerry said through his spokeswoman that he nonetheless believed that his grandmother may have received an inheritance, which could have been transferred to her before the suicide. By whatever means, the senator said, his grandmother was financially secure.

The senator's brother, Cameron, a Boston lawyer who converted to Judaism in 1983 upon marriage to his Jewish wife, said the information was especially ironic, given his two decades of immersion in the faith.

Friedman, the genealogist at the Center for Jewish History, said he hoped the Kerry family experience would be informative for the country in a positive way.

''Everyone would like to be in touch with their heritage,'' he said. ''In the past, people were informed in a prejudicial way.''

Now, he said, he hoped that people will see their heritage ''as multicultural, a mosaic, to appreciate diversity.''

Librarian Richard Pennington of the Globe Staff contributed to this report. Michael Kranish can be reached at kranish@globe.com