A mortgage note between John F. Kennedy and his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, for the former president’s “Summer White House” on Cape Cod, is up for auction, according to Boston-based RR Auction.
“I promise to pay Joseph P. Kennedy of North Ocean Boulevard, Palm Beach, Florida, or order, the principal sum of Fifty Thousand ($50,000.00) Dollars, without interest,” the one-page note reads.
In the note, signed on Jan. 2, 1957, the younger Kennedy agrees to pay his father back within five years for the purchase of a home on Irving Avenue in Hyannisport. During Kennedy’s presidency, the home would be known as the “Summer White House.”
The 9-bed, 6.5 bath home was built in 1925 and is now appraised at around $3.7 million, according to Barnstable assessing records.
Kennedy spent much of his childhood at his parents’ summer cottage in Hyannisport, according to RR Auction’s description of the mortgage note. The Irving Avenue home is two doors down from that cottage.
Less than nine months after Kennedy signed the mortgage note, a handwritten note at the bottom of the document was added with the words, “Paid in Full,” along with an unknown signature, according to Bobby Livingston, executive vice president at RR Auction.
“The old man got his money back,” Livingston said.
The note is among more than 40 pieces of Kennedy memorabilia up for auction and is “drawing lots of attention,” he said.
“John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, they were as close to a royal family that we had in America,” Livingston said. “To have the young president murdered with his beautiful wife next to him, it’s just one of those emotional connections that people want to possess things that belonged to the president and Mrs. Kennedy.”
The other items include signed photographs, a family-signed book, a cake knife from Kennedy’s inaugural celebration, and original pages from his Peace Corps legislation, according to RR Auction.
Bidding on the items began April 26 and ends May 15, Livingston said. On Friday morning, the mortgage note had 14 bids, with the highest at $3,999.
RR Auction has had “specialty Kennedy” memorabilia before, including Kennedy’s diary from 1945 to 1946 which sold for more than $700,000 in 2017, according to RR auction’s website.
The mortgage note and other Kennedy items were given to RR Auction by multiple private collectors, Livingston said. Still stapled to the original blue legal folder, the document is in “great condition,” Livingston said.
At the time of the loan, Kennedy was serving in the US Senate, three years before he launched a successful campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. His father, then 68, had been a movie mogul in Hollywood and started a liquor import business, according to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum’s website.
The note “shows a fascinating dynamic” between the two men, and a “little mystery,” Livingston said.
“Joe Kennedy was one of the richest men in the world at this point,” Livingston said. “It’s interesting to me that his father didn’t just buy the house and wanted an actual signed note saying ‘I’m gonna pay you back.’”
Ava Berger can be reached at ava.berger@globe.com. Follow her @Ava_Berger_.
