Br. Gustavus of Mary

Francis Fitzpatrick was born in 1832 in Ireland and emigrated to Canada, where at age twenty-three he entered the Novitiate at Montreal in 1855. It was there that he received the habit of the Brothers and the religious name of Brother Gustavus of Mary. He taught in the "English-Irish" school in Montreal but was transferred to Christian Brothers College in St. Louis, Missouri, where in 1860 he established the commercial department. Two years later he founded and was named Director of St. Lawrence O'Toole School in St. Louis. He was then named Director of St. Patrick School in Newark, New Jersey, and in 1868 Brother Gustavus helped Brother Justin establish the District of California and he opened a Novitiate at Oakland and schools in San Francisco and Portland, Oregon. He returned east and was named Director of St. Joseph's and later Calvert Hall, and then St. John's College High School in Washington. D.C. Finally he was named Inspector of Schools for the diocese of Philadelphia, a position he maintained until 1913. He retired to Ammendale in 1913 where he died ten years later at age ninety-one, having been a De La Salle Christian Brother for sixty-eight years.