From Memorial and Genealogical Record of Dodge and Jefferson Counties, Wisconsin, publ. 
1894 - Page 85-86
 
REV. FATHER P. W. CONDON.  For the past thirty years this worthy man has ministered to the 
spiritual wants of his fellow-man, and experience has convinced him that there is a thousand 
times more goodness, wisdom and love in the world than the majority of men suppose.  
Goodness is generous and diffuse; it is largeness of mind and sweetness of temper - balsam in 
the blood - and the greatest man is he who chooses right with the most invincible determination; 
who resists the sorest temptation from within and without; who bears the heaviest burdens 
cheerfully; who is calmest in storms and most fearless under menaces and frowns; whose 
reliance on truth, on virtue and on God is most unfaltering.  Biography, especially the biography of 
those who have risen by their own exertions to eminence is an inspiring and ennobling study, and 
its direct tendency is to reproduce the excellence it records.  In the life of Rev. Father P. W. 
CONDON there is much to inspire the youths of this and coming generations to lives of 
usefulness, and it is with pleasure that a few of the most important events of his career are 
noted.  He was born in Petersboro, Ontario, February 2, 1838, his parents being Michael and 
Margaret (O'LEARY) CONDON, natives of Mitchellstown, County Cork, Ireland.  They crossed 
the ocean to America in 1825, located in Petersboro, Ontario, in the vicinity of which place the 
father was engaged in tilling the soil until his death.  During the rebellion in the Province he 
served in the Queen's Own.  His wife, who survives him, bore him six sons and five daughters, of 
whom the subject of this sketch was the fourth in order of birth.  He was educated in the schools 
of Montreal, graduated from St. Lawrence College in 1864, and was soon after ordained a 
minister of the Catholic Church, and was sent to New Orleans, La., being on the first boat that 
plied the waters of the Mississippi between St. Louis and New Orleans after the close of the great 
Civil War.  He spent five years in that city, during which time he had charge of St. Mary's Orphan 
Boys' Asylum in the Third district, and also had charge of Jackson Barracks during the yellow 
fever epidemic of 1867.  He was taken with the fever, but fortunately his constitution was sound 
enough to combat the disease, and he recovered.  He was then called back to Montreal and was 
made vice-president of his old Alma Mater - St. Lawrence College, which position he occupied for 
five years.  He then went to Notre Dame, Ind., and was prefect of discipline for two years in the 
noted Notre Dame University, and he was next called to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he was president 
of St. Joseph's College, for one year.  Upon his arrival in Watertown, Wis., in 1874, he held the 
responsible position of president of Sacred Heart College for five years, then was recalled to 
Notre Dame University, where he held his former position of prefect of discipline until 1881.  In 
that year he returned to Watertown and was assistant pastor of St. Bernard's Church until 1886, 
when he was made pastor of the same.  This is an important charge, for the church is a large one 
and has a membership of about 300 families, and since becoming its pastor Father CONDON 
has been the means of erecting a substantial school house of two stories and a basement, which 
has an attendance of 130 pupils.  As an educator Father CONDON was thorough, painstaking 
and able, and being a man of scholarly attainments and wide learning, and an able and forcible 
speaker, he impresses his hearers with the truths of the Bible, and is an efficient and faithful 
laborer in his Master's service.
 
Submitted by Carol