Public Family Trees/Kennedy/Jean Kennedy Smith
1928 - 2020 Β· Female Β· Brookline, Massachusetts, United States
Daughter of Joseph Patrick Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy
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Jean Kennedy Smith was United States Ambassador to Ireland from 1993 to 1998 and the founder of the arts and disability organisation VSA. The eighth child of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, she was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1928 and educated at Manhattanville College. She married the businessman and campaign manager Stephen Edward Smith in 1956 and in 1974 founded Very Special Arts, whicβ¦
Born1928
Born to Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Family
A partnership that connects two branches of the Kennedy family.
Legacy
A defining role in the story of the Kennedy family.
Died2020
The close of a life whose connections continue through the family record.
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Gen 4 Β· b. 1967
Patrick J. Kennedy is an American politician and mental health advocate who represented Rhode Island in the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 2011. The youngest child of Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Joan Bennett Kennedy, he was born in 1967 and elected to the Rhode Island House of Representatives at twenty-one while still a student at Providence College. In Congress he was a lead author of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008, which required insurers to cover mental health and addiction treatment on the same terms as physical illness. After leaving office he founded the Kennedy Forum and co-founded One Mind for Research, and co-wrote the book "A Common Struggle".
Gen 4 Β· b. 1951
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is an American politician and author who served as Lieutenant Governor of Maryland from 1995 to 2003, the first woman to hold the office. The eldest child of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy, she was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1951, graduated from Harvard and the University of New Mexico School of Law, and taught before entering public life. As lieutenant governor she led Maryland's crime prevention and juvenile justice work and created one of the first state requirements for student community service. She was the Democratic nominee for governor of Maryland in 2002 and has since worked on retirement security policy and written "Failing America's Faithful". She is a sister of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Rory Kennedy.
Gen 4 Β· b. 1952
Joseph P. Kennedy II is an American businessman and former congressman who represented Massachusetts in the United States House of Representatives from 1987 to 1999, holding the Boston seat once occupied by his uncle President John F. Kennedy. The eldest son of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy, he was born in Boston in 1952 and educated at the University of Massachusetts Boston. In 1979 he founded Citizens Energy Corporation, a non-profit that used the proceeds of oil trading to supply discounted heating fuel to low income households, and he returned to lead it after leaving Congress. He is the father of the congressman Joseph P. Kennedy III.
Gen 4 Β· b. 1954
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an American lawyer and politician who became United States Secretary of Health and Human Services in 2025. The third child of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy, he was born in Washington in 1954 and educated at Harvard, the London School of Economics, the University of Virginia School of Law and Pace University, where he later taught environmental law. For decades he practised as an environmental lawyer, serving as chief prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper and founding the Waterkeeper Alliance, and he wrote books including "Crimes Against Nature". He entered the 2024 presidential race as a Democrat and then as an independent before ending his campaign, and was subsequently nominated and confirmed to the federal cabinet. He is the father of Conor Kennedy.
Gen 4 Β· b. 1954
Bobby Shriver is an American lawyer, journalist and activist, and the eldest child of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver. Born in Chicago in 1954, he was educated at Yale and Yale Law School and worked as a reporter before turning to advocacy. With the musician Bono he co-founded the ONE Campaign and Product Red, which raised very large sums for the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and he produced the "A Very Special Christmas" albums benefiting the Special Olympics. He served on the Santa Monica City Council from 2004 and as the city's mayor in 2010, campaigning on homelessness and veterans' housing. He is a nephew of President John F. Kennedy and a brother of Maria Shriver.
Gen 4 Β· 1955 - 2018
Christopher Kennedy Lawford was an American actor, author and public health advocate, the son of the actor Peter Lawford and Patricia Kennedy Lawford and a nephew of President John F. Kennedy. Born in Santa Monica in 1955, he was educated at Tufts, Boston College Law School and Harvard's School of Public Health, and appeared in soap operas including "All My Children" and "General Hospital" as well as films such as "Thirteen Days", in which the family's own history figured. He wrote several bestselling books on recovery from addiction, beginning with the memoir "Symptoms of Withdrawal", and served as a goodwill ambassador for drug dependence treatment with the United Nations. He died in 2018 at the age of sixty-three.
Gen 5 Β· b. 1980
Joe Kennedy III is an American politician and diplomat who represented Massachusetts in the United States House of Representatives from 2013 to 2021. Born in Boston in 1980, the son of the congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II and a grandson of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, he graduated from Stanford and Harvard Law School and served in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic before working as an assistant district attorney in Massachusetts. In Congress he focused on health care, mental health parity and manufacturing, and he delivered the Democratic response to the State of the Union address in 2018. He ran for the Senate in 2020 and was later appointed United States Special Envoy to Northern Ireland for Economic Affairs.
Gen 5 Β· b. 1989
Katherine Schwarzenegger is an American author, the eldest child of the journalist Maria Shriver and the actor and former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a great-granddaughter of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. Born in Los Angeles in 1989, she graduated from the University of Southern California and published her first book, "Rock What You've Got", on body image while still a student. She has since written "I Just Graduated, Now What?" and "The Gift of Forgiveness", a collection of interviews about forgiveness, as well as children's books, and she is a longtime advocate for animal rescue and adoption. She married the actor Chris Pratt in 2019.
Gen 5 Β· b. 1993
Jack Schlossberg is an American writer and political commentator, the youngest child of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg and the only grandson of President John F. Kennedy. Born in New York in 1993, he graduated from Yale and later took law and business degrees at Harvard. He has introduced the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award at the Kennedy Library, written for Time and Vogue on politics and public service, and built a large following for the political commentary videos he posts on social media. He campaigned publicly in the 2024 election cycle and in 2025 announced a run for Congress in New York. He is the brother of Rose and Tatiana Schlossberg.
Gen 5 Β· b. 1993
Patrick Schwarzenegger is an American actor and model, the son of the journalist Maria Shriver and the actor and former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and a great-grandson of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. Born in Los Angeles in 1993, he studied business at the University of Southern California while beginning a modelling career, and has appeared in films including "Midnight Sun", "Daniel Isn't Real" and "The Staircase" on television. He drew wide attention in 2025 for his role in the third season of the HBO series "The White Lotus". He is the brother of the author Katherine Schwarzenegger and a nephew of Timothy, Mark, Anthony and Bobby Shriver.
Gen 5 Β· b. 1988
Rose Schlossberg is an American writer and performer, the eldest child of Caroline Kennedy and the designer Edwin Schlossberg and the first grandchild of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Born in New York in 1988 and named for her great-grandmother Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, she studied at Harvard and took a master's degree in interactive telecommunications at New York University. She co-created and starred in the satirical web series "End Times Girls Club", which used comedy to address anxiety about the future, and has worked in video and performance art in New York. She is the sister of the journalist Tatiana Schlossberg and the writer Jack Schlossberg.
The Vanderbilts are an American family who rose from Dutch farming stock on Staten Island to hold the largest private fortune in the United States, built by Cornelius Vanderbilt, known as the Commodore, out of nineteenth century shipping and railroads, and known today for the Gilded Age houses their descendants built and for figures from Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough, to the journalist Anderson Cooper. ## Origins on Staten Island The family descends from Jan Aertsen van der Bilt, a Dutch settler who reached New Netherland in the seventeenth century and whose descendants farmed on Staten Island for generations. Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877) was born there, the son of a boatman, and began work as a teenager carrying freight across New York Harbour in a single sailing barge. He married his first cousin Sophia Johnson in 1813. ## The railroad fortune Vanderbilt moved from sail to steam, dominated the Hudson River and coastal trade, and after the Civil War turned to railroads, consolidating the New York Central system and building Grand Central Depot. He left almost the whole fortune to one son, William Henry Vanderbilt, who nearly doubled it in eight years before dividing it evenly among his own eight children. They built the family's great houses: The Breakers and Marble House at Newport, Biltmore House in North Carolina, Hyde Park on the Hudson, Florham in New Jersey and Shelburne Farms in Vermont. ## Notable members The third and fourth generations produced Consuelo Vanderbilt, who married the 9th Duke of Marlborough and became a social reformer in England; the sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art; Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, who died in the sinking of the Lusitania; and Harold Stirling Vanderbilt, who won the America's Cup three times and invented contract bridge. The modern line runs through Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt to the designer Gloria Vanderbilt and her son, the CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. ## Significance No American family is more closely identified with the Gilded Age. The Vanderbilts set the pattern for how new industrial wealth was spent, and then for how quickly such a fortune disperses across many heirs. What endures is institutional: Vanderbilt University, the Whitney Museum, and the houses at Newport, Hyde Park, Shelburne and Asheville that are now museums and public estates. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Founder | Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877), the Commodore | | Origin | Staten Island, New York, of Dutch descent | | Source of wealth | Steamboat shipping, then the New York Central railroads | | Famous houses | The Breakers, Marble House, Biltmore House, Hyde Park | | Best known members | Consuelo Vanderbilt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Gloria Vanderbilt, Anderson Cooper | | Generations covered | Five, from the Commodore to Anderson Cooper |
The Belgian royal family, formally the House of Belgium and dynastically a branch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, is the reigning family of Belgium, founded when the German prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld accepted the throne of the newly independent kingdom in 1831 and continuing today through King Philippe and his heir, Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant. Belgium became independent from the Netherlands in 1830 and chose a constitutional monarchy. Its National Congress looked abroad for a sovereign who could balance French and British interests, and settled on Leopold, a widowed, well-connected and famously cautious prince who had already turned down the crown of Greece. He took the constitutional oath on 21 July 1831, still the Belgian national day. Seven monarchs have reigned since: Leopold I, Leopold II, Albert I, Leopold III, Baudouin, Albert II and Philippe. ## Origins The dynasty's roots are in the small Thuringian duchy of Saxe-Coburg, whose princes married into half the thrones of nineteenth-century Europe. Leopold I was the uncle of both Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert, and his second marriage, to Louise-Marie of Orleans, daughter of the French king Louis Philippe I, tied the new kingdom to Paris as well as London. The crown did not pass in a straight line: Leopold II's only son died at the age of nine, so the succession moved to Leopold II's brother Philippe, Count of Flanders, and then to Philippe's son, Albert I. Every Belgian monarch since 1909 descends from that collateral branch. ## Notable members Leopold II is the most studied and most criticised figure in the family, remembered for the industrial boom and monumental building of his reign and, above all, for his personal rule over the Congo Free State. Albert I and Queen Elisabeth of Bavaria became wartime symbols of Belgian resistance behind the Yser in 1914. Leopold III's surrender in 1940 and his conduct under occupation triggered the political crisis known as the Royal Question and ended in his abdication. Baudouin reigned for 42 years and presided over Congolese independence and Belgium's transformation into a federal state. Daughters of the house carried its blood outward: Charlotte became Empress Carlota of Mexico, Marie-Jose was the last Queen of Italy, and Josephine-Charlotte was Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. ## Significance In a country divided by language, the monarchy has been the one institution claimed by both Flemish and Walloon Belgians, and the king's role in brokering coalition governments remains politically real rather than ceremonial. The family has also changed with the country: equal succession was introduced in 1991, making Princess Elisabeth the first female Duchess of Brabant and the future first queen regnant of the Belgians, and in 2020 a court recognised Delphine of Saxe-Coburg as a daughter of Albert II. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Dynasty | House of Belgium (Saxe-Coburg and Gotha) | | Country | Kingdom of Belgium | | Founder | Leopold I, King of the Belgians (1790-1865) | | Reigning since | 21 July 1831 | | Monarchs to date | Seven, from Leopold I to Philippe | | Current head | King Philippe (born 1960), reigning since 2013 | | Heir apparent | Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant (born 2001) | | Principal residences | Royal Palace of Brussels, Castle of Laeken | | Motto | L'union fait la force / Eendracht maakt macht |
The House of Hohenzollern is the German dynasty that ruled Brandenburg from 1415, held the Prussian crown from 1701, and gave Germany its three emperors between 1871 and the fall of the monarchy in 1918. This tree follows the senior Prussian line in one unbroken descent, from Frederick William the Great Elector, through the kings of Prussia and the German Emperors, down to Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, the present head of the house. ## Origins The family takes its name from Hohenzollern Castle on a hill in the Swabian Alb, where a line of counts is recorded from the eleventh century. A Swabian Zollern married into the burgraviate of Nuremberg in 1192, and the Franconian branch that grew from it spent two centuries accumulating lands and credit with the Holy Roman Emperors. The decisive moment came in 1415, when Emperor Sigismund invested Frederick VI of Nuremberg as Elector of Brandenburg in return for his political and financial support. The Duchy of Prussia, a separate inheritance lying outside the Empire, passed to the Brandenburg electors in 1618, and Frederick William, the Great Elector, welded the two into a single functioning state after the devastation of the Thirty Years' War. ## Notable members Frederick I turned the electorate into a kingdom in 1701. His son Frederick William I, the Soldier King, built the army and the treasury that his own son, **Frederick the Great**, used to seize Silesia and to make Prussia a European power, while also composing music, building Sanssouci and corresponding with Voltaire. **Queen Louise** became the emotional centre of Prussian resistance to Napoleon. **Wilhelm I**, with Otto von Bismarck as his minister president, was proclaimed German Emperor at Versailles in 1871. His son **Frederick III** and the liberal English princess he married, Victoria, daughter of Queen Victoria, reigned for only ninety nine days. **Wilhelm II**, the last Kaiser, abdicated in 1918 and died in Dutch exile in 1941. ## Significance No other German family shaped the modern state so directly. Hohenzollern rulers created the Prussian civil service, compulsory schooling and the general staff, sponsored the Berlin academies and the Humboldt university model, and then used Prussian power to unify Germany around themselves. The monarchy ended with the revolution of November 1918, but the house continues as a private family: the headship passed from Wilhelm II to his eldest son, then to Louis Ferdinand, and in 1994 to Georg Friedrich, whose own father and uncles are part of the succession story told in this tree. ## Quick facts | Fact | Details | |---|---| | Family name | Hohenzollern | | Place of origin | Hohenzollern Castle, Swabia, southern Germany | | Ruled | Brandenburg from 1415, Prussia from 1618, Germany from 1871 | | Royal title | King in Prussia from 1701, King of Prussia from 1772 | | Imperial title | German Emperor, 1871 to 1918 | | German Emperors | Wilhelm I, Frederick III, Wilhelm II | | Monarchy ended | 9 November 1918 | | Present head of the house | Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia, since 1994 | | Principal residences | Berlin City Palace, Sanssouci and Cecilienhof at Potsdam, Charlottenburg | | Branch shown here | The senior Prussian line only, not Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen |
The Rothschilds are a European banking dynasty founded in Frankfurt am Main by Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812), whose five sons established banking houses in Frankfurt, Vienna, Naples, London and Paris and together built the most powerful private financial network of the nineteenth century. ## Origins Mayer Amschel Rothschild was born in 1744 in the Judengasse, the walled Jewish street of Frankfurt am Main, where the family took its name from the red shield that had marked an ancestor's house. He began as a dealer in rare coins and medals, became court factor to Crown Prince Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel in 1769, and turned that position into a banking business handling loans, bullion and government paper. With his wife Gutle Schnapper he had ten children who reached adulthood, five sons and five daughters. ## The five houses Mayer Amschel's decisive act was to place his sons in five cities so that the family could move money and news across borders as a single firm. Amschel Mayer stayed in Frankfurt, Salomon went to Vienna, Nathan to London, Carl to Naples and James to Paris. The brothers financed the allied campaigns against Napoleon, then the governments, railways and industries of nineteenth century Europe. The Naples house closed in 1860 with Italian unification, Frankfurt in 1901 for want of an heir, and Vienna in 1938 after the Anschluss. London and Paris survived, and their successors trade today as Rothschild and Co and the Edmond de Rothschild Group. ## Notable members Nathan Mayer Rothschild founded N M Rothschild and Sons and made London the centre of international lending. His son Lionel broke the bar on Jews sitting in Parliament, taking his Commons seat in 1858, and his grandson Nathan Mayer became the first Jewish member of the House of Lords in 1885. James Mayer de Rothschild dominated French finance under three regimes and bought Chateau Lafite, while his son Edmond funded the first Jewish agricultural settlements in Palestine. The family also produced naturalists and collectors rather than only bankers: Walter, 2nd Baron Rothschild, the zoologist to whom the Balfour Declaration was addressed in 1917; his brother Charles, the flea specialist who founded British nature conservation; Charles's daughter Dame Miriam Rothschild, a Fellow of the Royal Society; and another daughter, Nica, the patron of Thelonious Monk. Jacob, 4th Baron Rothschild, built RIT Capital Partners and chaired the trustees of the National Gallery. ## Significance The Rothschilds were the first banking family to operate as a genuinely international partnership, and for much of the nineteenth century they were the principal lenders to European states. Their name is attached to railways, mines, hospitals, museums, nature reserves, Bordeaux first growths and a long tradition of Jewish philanthropy. Repeated marriages between first cousins kept capital and control inside the family, which is why the branches of this tree cross back into one another so often. | Fact | Details | | --- | --- | | Founder | Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812) | | Matriarch | Gutle Schnapper (1753-1849) | | Origin | The Judengasse, Frankfurt am Main | | Children of the founder | Ten, five sons and five daughters | | The five houses | Frankfurt, Vienna, Naples, London, Paris | | Motto | Concordia, Integritas, Industria | | Principal firms | N M Rothschild and Sons, de Rothschild Freres, S. M. von Rothschild | | Still active today | Rothschild and Co, Edmond de Rothschild Group | | Known for | Government finance, railways, wine estates, natural history, art collections, philanthropy |
Jean Kennedy Smith's recorded parents are Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.
Jean Kennedy Smith has 1 recorded child: William Kennedy Smith.
Jean Kennedy Smith married Stephen Edward Smith.
Jean Kennedy Smith has 8 recorded siblings: Joseph Patrick Kennedy Jr., John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Rose Marie Kennedy, Kathleen Kennedy Cavendish, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Patricia Kennedy Lawford, Robert Francis Kennedy, Edward Moore Kennedy.
Jean Kennedy Smith is recorded as US Ambassador to Ireland and arts advocate in the Kennedy family tree.
Jean Kennedy Smith's recorded native place is Brookline, Massachusetts, United States.
6 ancestors and 1 descendant of Jean Kennedy Smith are recorded so far, within a tree of 56 people.
Jean Kennedy Smith is recorded in the Kennedy family tree on My rOoOts, alongside 55 other people.
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