Condy, Jeremiah, 1709-1768

Jeremiah Condy (1708-1768), bookseller, publisher, and Baptist minister, was the son of Boston schoolmaster Jeremiah Condy and Susanna Hiller Condy. His father was an early convert to Baptism (c. 1720), and it was determined that the younger Condy should attend college to increase the number of college-educated Baptists in New England. He attended Harvard first as a Hollis Fellow, later as a Hopkins Fellow (B.A., 1726; M.A., 1733). He served as Harvard Librarian, 1729-1730, before being called briefly to the pulpit of the strife-ridden First Baptist Church of Newport, R.I.

In 1735 he sailed for England in search of a pulpit. He preached at Taunton and moved in the best religious and literary circles in London, forming a close friendship with Dissenter James Foster (1697-1753). The death of Elisha Callender, however, brought Condy back to Boston and he eventually occupied the pulpit of Callender's First Baptist Church of Boston.

Condy's easy-going, tolerant Arminian views were not widely shared by his Congregation, however, and the dissatisfied New Lights soon formed the Second Baptist Church. The declining size of the membership of his church adversely affected his income, however, and Condy was soon forced to try to supplement his income. Perhaps as early as 1754, he started a bookselling business which by 1763 had become one of the most active such trades in New England. He stocked mostly imported books on law, medicine, and mathematics, as well as English magazines and classics. The shop also functioned as a lending library and carried a line of dry goods.

Condy also ventured into the publishing field as early as 1755 when he published some sermons of the Arminian Jonathan Mayhew. But he is best known as the publisher of his friend Thomas Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts. Declining health and his relatively liberal views forced his resignation from the First Baptist Church in 1764 and his bookselling business seemed to occupy much of his attention during his last years.