Early Years
Thomas Joseph Pendergast, also known to close friends as "TJ" was born in St. Joseph, Missouri, in 1872. He was raised Catholic and had nine brothers and sisters. The family's name is misspelled as Pendergest in the 1880 census and is listed accordingly:
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- Michael Pendergest 52, Mary Pendergest 47, James Pendergest 24, Mary Pendergest 22, Hannah Pendergest 20, John Pendergest 19, Delia Pendergest 16, Maggie Pendergest 14, Michael Pendergest 12, Thomas Pendergest 7.
It has been claimed that Pendergast attended St. Mary's College, a boarding school for boys as young as nine and as old as eighteen, conducted by the Jesuits in St. Mary's, Kansas, but records of the school, kept in the Jesuit archives in St. Louis, disprove this claim. (St. Mary's College was not connected in any way to the girls school of the same name in Leavenworth, Kansas, conducted by the Sisters of Charity.) It is sometimes claimed that he earned a football scholarship to St. Mary's College, but that also is untrue. There were no athletic scholarships awarded at that time, and there were no intramural games.
In the 1890s young Tom Pendergast worked in his older brother's, James Pendergast, West Bottoms tavern. The West Bottoms were at that time an immigrant section of town located at the 'bottom' of the bluffs overlooking the Missouri river, above which spread the more prosperous sections of Kansas City. Here, this older brother James Pendergast, an alderman in Kansas City's city council, tutored him in the diversities of the city's political ways and systems, and in the strategic advantages in controlling whole blocs of voters. Jim retired in 1910 and died the next year, naming Tom his successor. Following his brother's death, Pendergast served in the city council until stepping down in 1916 to focus on consolidating the factions of the Jackson County Democratic Party. After a new city charter passed in 1925 placed the city under the auspices of a city manager picked by a smaller council, Pendergast easily gained control of the government.
Pendergast married Caroline Snyder in January 1911 and raised three children, two girls and a boy, at their home on 5650 Ward Parkway.
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