Frederick A. Kerry, grandfather of United States Presidential candidate John Kerry, was born as Fritz Kohn on the road between Freudenthal (Bruntal) and Troppau (Opava), south of Jaegerndorf (Krnov) at Bennisch, Austria (now Horni Benesov in the Czech Republic), on 10 May 1873. The son of Benedict Kohn and his wife Mathilde (née Fraenkel) (1845-1935), his birth was recorded among the Jewish births on the last folio (folio 77), of vol. VII (1866-1873) of the Roman Catholic birth records of the Bennisch parish.
He attended a Gymnasium (school) and finished with Honours. He became an administrative accountant in his uncle Alfred Fränkel's shoe factory, and married Ida Löwe, (born in Budapest, Hungary), in about 1890. She was the daughter of bank employee Siegfried Löwe and his wife Josefine, née Löw. Both Fritz Kohn and his wife Ida Löwe were German-speaking Jews, but in 1901 they converted to Catholicism.
By decree of 17 December 1901 of the Austrian Statthalterei in Vienna, the Kohns officially changed their name to Kerry (including their son Erich, who was born on 26 February 1901). At this time Fritz was listed as born in Bennisch but originating from Freudenthal, and currently working as a supplier for a shoe factory in Mödling, Austria. The name change was ordered in Austrian Silesia on 17 March 1902 at Troppau.
The family sailed on the Königin Luise from Genoa, Italy, on 4 May 1905 and arrived in New York's Ellis Island on 18 May 1905. Kerry filed a Declaration of Intention for naturalization in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, on 21 June 1907, and a Petition of Naturalization in the same Court on 6 February 1911.
He committed suicide, by shooting himself, in the restroom at the Copley Plaza Hotel at 487 Boylston Street on 23 November 1921 in Boston, Massachusetts, and was buried in Holyrood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts. His son Richard Kerry was 6 years old at the time.
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