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.

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