Like Madeleine Albright, Catholic, John Kerry, discovered as an adult a hidden ancestry that showed his father's family had been Jewish shortly before emigrating from Europe to America. What more could be learned about this presidential candidate's grandfather, Frederick A. Kerry, formerly known as Fritz Kohn?
Rosemary Isabel Forbes made an odd choice when she married Richard John Kerry, whose father, Frederick (Fred) A. Kerry, who shot and killed himself at the Copley Plaza Hotel in November 1921.
Fred Kerry had been born in Bennisch, then part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, around 1873 to the Benedict Kohns (one source says Fred was "Fritz" Kohn, son of a Jewish brewer in what is now Horni Benesov, Czechoslovakia, and changed his name to Frederick Kerry in 1901 or 1902 and then converted to Catholicism). He was married to a college-educated musician, Ida Loewe from Hungary, and they had a four-year-old son, Eric Frederic Kerry, when they departed in 1905 from Genoa, Italy to live in Chicago. His business address there was 1744 First National Bank building, where he was extremely busy, judging from a somewhat comical news item that appeared in the Racine Daily Journal on October 11, 1909 under the headline, "Ran an Auto into North Side Saloon":
© 2004 by Linda Minor
"So you see, my dear Coningsby, that the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes."
Benjamin Disraeli, in his novel, Coningsby,published in London (1844)
Fred Kerry had been born in Bennisch, then part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, around 1873 to the Benedict Kohns (one source says Fred was "Fritz" Kohn, son of a Jewish brewer in what is now Horni Benesov, Czechoslovakia, and changed his name to Frederick Kerry in 1901 or 1902 and then converted to Catholicism). He was married to a college-educated musician, Ida Loewe from Hungary, and they had a four-year-old son, Eric Frederic Kerry, when they departed in 1905 from Genoa, Italy to live in Chicago. His business address there was 1744 First National Bank building, where he was extremely busy, judging from a somewhat comical news item that appeared in the Racine Daily Journal on October 11, 1909 under the headline, "Ran an Auto into North Side Saloon":