Arabella Kennedy was born still on August 23, 1956, in Newport, Rhode Island, the first child of Senator John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. Jackie had suffered a miscarriage in 1955 and had been hopeful that this pregnancy would result in the child both she and her husband longed for. The name Arabella had been chosen by Jackie before the birth. In the conventions of the era, the stillbirth was not widely publicized, and the family bore the loss largely in private.
The grief was profound. JFK was at the 1956 Democratic National Convention in Chicago when Jackie went into labor prematurely; by the time news reached him, it was too late. Jackie recovered at Newport Hospital surrounded by her family. The loss deepened an already complex marriage and reinforced Jackie's understanding that grief would be an enduring companion through her years with the Kennedys.
Arabella was originally buried at Holyrood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts. After President Kennedy's assassination and burial at Arlington National Cemetery in November 1963, Jacqueline Kennedy arranged for Arabella's remains — and those of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, the couple's fourth child who had lived only 39 hours in August 1963 — to be reinterred alongside their father at Arlington.
The three rest together in the Kennedy family plot: the president flanked by the two children who died before and during his presidency. Their graves serve as a quiet reminder that the Kennedys' public story of power and ambition was always interwoven with private threads of loss.
Arabella Kennedy is the late child of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier.
Arabella Kennedy was the first child of President John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy, stillborn on August 23, 1956, in Newport, Rhode Island. She was the couple's first full-term pregnancy, preceded by a miscarriage in 1955.
Arabella Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery alongside her father, President Kennedy, and her brother Patrick Bouvier Kennedy. Her remains were moved to Arlington after JFK's assassination and burial there in November 1963.