The story begins, appropriately enough, just before St. Patrick’s Day in 1984 with a telephone call from one Joseph Riley, who at the time was a professor at Mohawk Valley Community College. We were friends. 

Riley had been on a trip to Ireland and visited Barry’s, an old pub in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. While at the bar, Riley met another professor, who taught at that city’s Magee University.  

The Magee professor asked the MVCC professor where he was from. Riley said a place called Utica, New York, and began to explain where the city was. The Irish professor said there was no need to explain. He knew exactly where Utica, New York was located.

“That’s where the Irish poet Patrick Pierce Condon lived. He is buried in St. Agnes Cemetery on Mohawk Street.”

When the shocked Riley returned home, he went to St. Agnes Cemetery. Despite being in East Utica, which has been the home of many Italian families, the cemetery is heavily populated by Irish. 

Sure enough, Riley found the grave.

“Patrick Pierce Condon. Born 1777. Died March 30, 1857.”

Condon is the Americanized spelling of his name. In the Irish it is Padraig Cun-dun.

Anyway, the inscription on the grave marker was all the information the cemetery had, but the late Judge John Walsh, a great local historian, came up with more. Using the 1850 Census and other records, Walsh found out that Condon lived on a farm in the Walker Road area of Deerfield, was married, had three daughters, one son, and was a naturalized citizen. 

Judge Walsh also found a hardcover book, 112 pages, published in 1932, written in Gaelic and containing Condon’s poetry and letters. 

The book, as it turned out, had been read by Frank Dugan, a student of all things Irish, fluent in Gaelic and a reference librarian at Colgate University. 

Dugan said the book’s preface contained more information on Condon. He was born in Ballymacoda, County Cork, had no formal schooling, was an unsuccessful farmer in Ireland, sought a better life in the United States, picked Oneida County because he had cousins living here, bought a farm in Deerfield because the land was affordable, and near a school for his children and near a church where Mass was celebrated daily.

So why is this 1984 story coming up now? It isn’t even St. Patrick’s Day.

The Irish Cultural Center (ICC) is having a program about Patrick Condon (Padraig Cundun). 

Tony O’Flynn will be presenting his research on Condon’s writings via Zoom from Ireland. O’Flynn wrote his doctoral thesis about the poet.  

The public is invited to the presentation at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 10. It will be online via Zoom so people can either view from home or join in at the ICC, 623 Columbia St., Utica. 

There is no charge. Registration will be through Eventbrite, which will also have the Zoom link.

If someone has information about Condon, especially about any descendants, they can contact Mike Hoke, hoke84@gmail.com, who is working with the ICC to bring attention to Condon, his poems, and his letters, all of which are informative about life in this area and in Ireland back in the day.

When I wrote about Condon in 1984, no relatives came forward. It was a long shot then, as it is now. 

Sometimes, though, the unexpected happens. They call this the luck of the Irish.