1870 – 1956 (November 8)

William Wallace Donovan, son of Daniel Donovan and Mary Sweeney, was born in Andover, Massachusetts, on November 28, 1870, and was baptized there in St. Augustine Church on December 4, 1870. He was received on September 3, 1891 at Villanova, and entered the novitiate there, professing first vows on September 4, 1892 and solemn vows on September 19, 1895. He was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Patrick Ryan in the Philadelphia Cathedral on May 30, 1896.

After ordination, Father Donovan was assigned as an assistant in 1896 to our parish in Mechanicville, New York. He transferred in 1898 to Atlantic City, New Jersey, and in 1900, to Havana, Cuba. He returned to Upstate New York in 1902 and was stationed at Hoosick Falls until 1906, when he was assigned to Andover, Mass. From 1918 to 1926, he was pastor and rector of Saint John's in Schaghticoke, N.Y., and in 1926, he was named prior of Holy Rosary in Lawrence, Mass. He served there until 1932 when he was assigned to Saint Mary's in Lawrence, Mass. Later that year he took ill and was hospitalized.

From 1938 until his death, Father Donovan was a patient at the Seton Institute in Baltimore. He died on November 8, 1956 in Baltimore, Maryland, at the age of 86, the oldest member of the province. Following his Funeral Mass at St. Augustine Church, Andover, on November 12th,  he was buried in Saint Mary's Cemetery in Lawrence.