John Fitzgerald, the son of Irish immigrants, at age 22, leaves medical school to support his eight motherless brothers after their father dies.
John F. Fitzgerald, later to be known as "Honey Fitz," was born in Boston's North End in 1863, one year prior to the end of the bloody American Civil War. He was the son of Irish immigrants and like other Irish boys of his time he grew up in one of Boston's red brick tenements. Also like other city boys in that era, the streets were his playground and often his schoolroom, in that Fitzgerald received the basics of survival in a cobblestoned world.
Some twenty years later, in the 1880s, in Boston, Massachusetts the Irish made up the majority of the city's population but that had very little to do with local social status. These numerous transplanted sons of Ireland and their offspring born in America lived and survived under the heel of the "Yankee aristocracy." But somehow, Fitzgerald was determined to rise above such constraints.
Tragedy Strikes
At the start of Fitzgerald's fledgling medical studies he suffered a major set back. In 1885, his sixty-year old father, Thomas Fitzgerald, died. Now Johnny, only twenty-two and standing at barely five feet two inches tall, was saddled with the big responsibility of raising his eight motherless brothers. His pregnant mother, Rosanna, had collapsed with a stroke and died, in 1879, after hearing the mistaken news that her husband and children had been involved in a terrible train crash.
Farewell Medical School
But in spite of this current and unexpected misfortune, Johnny shouldered this new responsibility and never wavered. He had been in medical school at Harvard when his father died. Now all of that had to be put aside to support his brothers. His lasting legacy from his father, besides eight brothers to raise, was $150 in cash and $12 worth of furniture. The local parish priest suggested that he break up the family by dividing the boys between their three aunts. Johnny Fitzgerald would have none of it.
John Fitzgerald continues with: John Fitzgerald on the Rise .
