Reading 1: The Kennedy Family Background. John Fitzgerald Kennedy (often called Jack) was born and spent his early childhood in a modest, three-story, wooden frame house at 83 Beals Street in Brookline, Massachusetts. Joseph P. Kennedy had purchased the house in anticipation of his marriage to Rose Fitzgerald in 1914. The family moved to a larger home nearby in 1921 when John was four years old. The house at 83 Beals Street was built in 1909. It stands in a middle-class area which was still under development when the Kennedys moved to Brookline.