SNIPPET: One of the most remarkable elections in the history of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was held in November 1854 -- see below. The great wave of Famine-inspired immigration was over, but Boston, Lowell and other Massachusetts cities were now inudated with Irish immigrants. Boston had tried particularly hard to resist the tide, imploring the state government to spend less money on public schools and other services that immigrants used. The city had imposed a head tax on immigrants. Nothing worked. In 1847 alone, at least 30,000 immigrants poured into Boston, and of course, 1847 was not nearly the end of the Famine. Young Patrick KENNEDY, leaving a starving Ireland in 1849, met his wife-to-be, Bridget MURPHY, on an immigrant ship, the "Washington Irving." Both were from Co. Wexford - Patrick, at least, from Dunganstown. Though the potato blight had been less severe in the SE corner of Ireland where the KENNEDY family lived, they were losing their struggle to maintain their whitewashed cottage and their 25 acres. Soon after arriving in America Patrick and Bridget married and set up their household in the slums of an Irish ghetto of East Boston, a place where, it was said, children were born to die. Horribly, most did - 60% in Boston did not live to see their sixth birthday, and adults fared little better, for the average Famine immigrant lived no longer than 4-5 years after stepping foot on American soil. The Irish lived in shanties and basements, breeding grounds of disease and despair. Within months of their arrival, a cholera epidemic swept through the Irish slums of Boston, killing more than 500 immigrants and their children. Conditions in East Boston, were hardly unique. The vast majority of the Irish had settled in the great cities of the American Northeast, spurning the farming life that had cruelly betrayed them in Ireland, living in the cheapest available lodging. By the time the KENNEDYs started their family in East Boston, their Yankee neighbors were in an uproar Nothing had been done, and so voters went to the polls in 1854 and chose candidates who knew nothing, or at least made that dubious claim. The Know-Nothing (American party) movement in its various forms was among the most successful third parties in American history. An outgrowth of a network of local organizations with names like the Order of The Star Spangled Banner, the Black Snakes, the Rip Saws, the Know-Nothings captured local offices through New England, the mid-Atlantic, the South, and the West in the 1850s. Their meetings were held secretly, and the measures they promoted were never discussed openly. When anyone who was not a party member asked a Know-Nothing any question regarding his policies, the reply was, "I don't know." Constant repetition of this phrase gave the party its popular name. While the movement despised blacks and foreigners in general, it's! specific complaints during and after the Famine immigration was with Catholics. A newspaper mocked the movement by printing a Know-Nothing menu consisting of "Jesuit soup, boiled priest and fried nuns." While it lent itself to mockery, the Know-Nothing movement was a powerful force in pre-Civil War politics. Its most spectacular success came in 1854 in Massachusetts, which elected Know-Nothings into every statewide office, including governor. Every state senator was a Know-Nothing and of the 378 members of the state House of Representatives, 376 were Know-Nothings. The vast majority were amateur politicians who truly knew nothing of government and politics; their field of expertise was the discontent of their fellow native-born Americans. True to their word, they passed two pieces of anti-immigrant legislation; one barring naturalized citizens from voting until they had lived in the United States for 21 years! The other prohibited immigrants, even those who became citizens, from holding elective office in Massachusetts. Demonstrating that they knew "something," the legislators voted themselves a pay raise before adjourning! There is no known record of Patrick KENNEDY's thoughts on the movement; very likely he was too busy trying to keep his wife and children fed, clothed, and safe in an atmosphere that was the ruin of many a family. His arrival in Boston is well chronicled, as is the later family history and the celebrated accession of his great-grandson, John F. KENNEDY, the 35th President of the United States. In the state elections of 1854, the Know-Nothings carried Massachusetts, polled large votes in NY and PA, and gained a considerable following in the South. The Know-Nothings split over the slavery question in the election of 1856, and the party rapidly disappeared. -- Excerpts, "World Book Encyclopedia" & "The Irish In America."