Francis Burke Fitzpatrick (15 March 1872–13 March 1943), educator, was born at the home of his maternal great-grandparents in Bedford County and was the son of Hiram A. Fitzpatrick and his second wife, Frances Johnson Fitzpatrick. His mother died four days after his birth, and he grew up in the household of his mother's parents in Pittsylvania County and may have had little contact with his father. When he was sixteen, Fitzpatrick went to live with his half-brother Walter Fitzpatrick in Bedford, where he attended Liberty Academy, worked in a drugstore and a dry goods store, sold sewing machines, and served as a deputy sheriff under an uncle. In 1890 he entered the new Randolph-Macon Academy in Bedford and graduated in 1893. Fitzpatrick worked as principal of Clifton Academy in the Pittsylvania County town of Toshes to raise money to attend college. He entered Randolph-Macon College, in Ashland, in 1895 and graduated with a B.A. degree three years later.

Fitzpatrick returned to Clifton Academy as principal for two more years. In the three following years he taught in grammar schools and high schools and served as a high school principal in various Bedford and Pittsylvania County schools. From 1900 to 1902 he taught at the Jeter Institute, in Bedford. In Christiansburg on 24 December 1903, he married Mary Douglas Wade, a college graduate who taught art at the institute. They had two daughters and one son and lived in Gate City for six years and in Roanoke for three while Fitzpatrick was principal of high schools in those places. From 1913 to 1919 he was superintendent of schools in the city of Bristol. In 1919 he received his master's degree from the University of Chicago with a thesis entitled "Survey of the Public Schools of Bristol, Virginia." During the summers of 1927 and 1928, he pursued a doctorate at Columbia University.

In 1919 Fitzpatrick became professor of education at six-year-old Radford State Teachers College (later Radford University), where he taught for the remainder of his life and from 1919 to 1932 frequently wrote for its periodical Virginia School Messages. He had been active in the Virginia State Teachers Association, was its president in 1907, and held various other offices in the association while teaching at Radford. In 1930 Fitzpatrick became president of the association's Department of Rural Education and editor of the column on that topic for the Virginia Journal of Education. He wrote frequently for the journal on rural education at a time when the majority of Virginians lived in rural areas or small towns. A recognized expert on rural education, Fitzpatrick believed that small country schools offered opportunities for good education if properly supported. He published three professional texts, Present Day Standards for Teaching (1926), Supervision of Elementary Schools (1931), and Modern Education (1936). Fitzpatrick also wrote a short book on his family, History of the Bedford Fitzpatricks (1937), and in the mid-1930s wrote but did not at the time publish a brief "History of Ingles Ferry."

Students at Radford dedicated the yearbook to him in 1942. Both of his daughters graduated from Radford and became teachers. His younger daughter, Evelyn Fitzpatrick, after earning a master's degree at Columbia University, joined Radford's education department faculty and supervised teacher training for students seeking certification in elementary education. Fitzpatrick's wife died on 19 July 1935. Francis Burke Fitzpatrick died of heart disease on 13 March 1943 at his home in Radford and was buried in Sunrise Burial Park, in Pulaski County. In a posthumous Virginia Journal of Education biography, the Spotsylvania County school superintendent wrote of Fitzpatrick, "No one in Virginia showed a deeper interest in rural education and no one gave more of his time and his talents to help the rural teacher in building better schools and improving rural conditions."

Sources Consulted:
Biography in Philip Alexander Bruce, Virginia: Rebirth of the Old Dominion (1929), 3:309–310 (portrait facing 309), and Virginia Journal of Education 37 (1944): 290, 292 (quotation); autobiographical section in History of the Bedford Fitzpatricks (1937), 33–36; Birth Register, Bedford Co., Bureau of Vital Statistics (BVS), Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; BVS Marriage Register, Montgomery Co.; Francis Burke Fitzpatrick Papers, Special Collections and University Archives, Newman Library, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg; BVS Death Certificate, Radford, Montgomery Co.; obituaries in Richmond Times-Dispatch and Roanoke Times, both 14 Mar. 1943, Virginia Journal of Education 36 (1943): 324.

Photograph in Bruce, Rebirth of the Old Dominion.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Teri L. Castelow.

How to cite this page:
Teri L. Castelow, "Francis Burke Fitzpatrick (1872–1943)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2025 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Fitzpatrick_Francis_Burke, accessed [today's date]).

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