The tragic disappearance of Mr John F. Kennedy jnr marks the end of another link between the Kennedy clan and the land of their ancestors. However, Ireland has always been more of a spiritual home to America's most powerful political family rather than a base they have lived in for any length of time. New generations of the family regularly come here to refresh their contact with Ireland, but apart from Ms Jean Kennedy Smith's five-year stint as ambassador, few have spent long periods of time in Ireland.
Last year, one of Robert Kennedy's sons made the pilgrimage to the ancestral homestead in Dunganstown, Co Wexford, during his honeymoon in Ireland.
"The contacts between the family and Co Wexford are as strong as ever," said Mr Sean Reidy, chief executive of the John F. Kennedy Trust in nearby New Ross.
The former US president may have lost his pride of place on the walls of many Irish houses, but not in Dunganstown, where the visitor centre was thronged with visitors yesterday.
On his presidential visit to Ireland in June 1963, Mr Kennedy promised to return the following year. However, by November, he was dead, shot in Dallas, Texas, by Lee Harvey Oswald. In June 1968, his brother Robert Kennedy was also killed by an bullet of another assassin, Sirhan Sirhan.
Ms Kennedy Smith accompanied her brother John on his presidential visit to Ireland and then, 30 years later, she was appointed US ambassador to Ireland. Her appointment by President Clinton ruffled feathers in diplomatic circles and led to criticism afterwards by a former US ambassador to Britain, Mr Raymond Seitz. He claimed she was overly sympathetic to nationalists in Northern Ireland.
However, Ms Kennedy Smith came to play a pivotal role in the unfolding peace process, particularly before the first IRA ceasefire. She was also enormously popular in Dublin, and opened up the ambassador's residence in the Phoenix Park to thousands of visitors. She left the post last year.
Her niece, Courtney, a daughter of Robert Kennedy, is married to Paul Hill, one of the Guildford Four, who were wrongfully convicted of the Guildford and Woolwich pub bombings.
Another of Robert Kennedy's children, Joe Kennedy, has been a frequent visitor to Ireland. On one visit to the North, he became involved in an altercation with a British soldier, which was widely televised. The Kennedy clan is descended from Patrick Kennedy, a peasant farmer from Dunganstown. He left Wexford in his 20s to escape the famine in 1848 and travelled to Boston. The descendants of two other brothers who stayed behind still live in Dunganstown.
Patrick Kennedy was a cooper but was also active in local politics and the fight against anti-Catholic discrimination. In September 1849, he married Brigid Murphy, also from Dunganstown. His son Patrick junior worked as a docker and then a saloonkeeper. At the age of 33, he was elected to the state senate. He made large amounts of money from drinks distribution and banking.
The oldest of his four children, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, created the Kennedy fortune and provided the political ambition that was to lead to John F. Kennedy becoming the first Catholic president of the US. Joe Kennedy was a banker, president of the New York stock exchange and, during the second World War, the US ambassador to Britain.
