The mourning locket depicting Thomas Fitzgerald. The reverse side of the locket contains an encapsulated lock of Fitzgerald’s hair. COURTESY OF ARCHIVES

BY EDWARD WILSON, ARCHIVES

Four years ago, the archives opened a safe that had remained locked for over a decade. Several incredible items were revealed. However, this mourning locket with a 19th century portrait and a lock of hair on its reverse was perhaps the most eye-catching and intriguing.

I set out to get the fullest story possible on the item. The paperwork attached with it stated that it depicted Rev. Thomas Fitzgerald and was owned by Fr. Martin Nahstoll. I searched priests that served our area, as well as several adjacent areas of the period. There was no Rev. Thomas Fitzgerald. There was also no mention of him in the file of Fr. Nahstoll.

I decided to check some period newspapers. Here I found several references to Captain Thomas Fitzgerald. Capt. Fitzgerald was famed on the Ohio River. This made sense, as I was not convinced that this very well-to-do looking man was clergy. I looked for any reference photographs of Capt. Fitzgerald. I could find none. I decided to reach out to the Ohio River Museum thinking that perhaps they had reference images of the good captain. The museum was closed for construction and remains closed as of writing this article.

I was fairly certain that this was “Capt.” Fitzgerald and not “Fr.” Fitzgerald and in my August 2022 article in the WKC I teased the locket, stating that we had an item, “having to do with 19th-century steamboat captains.” However, the trail soon ran cold.

Over the next few years, I would return to the locket, but short of old newspapers mentioning Capt. Fitzgerald, there was nothing to connect any provenance to the item. However, things changed this past February while reorganizing our deceased priests record group.

After reorganizing every file in the record group, there were several pre-diocesan priests’ folders and an unlabeled folder that needed to be reviewed. The unlabeled folder turned out to be research conducted by Fr. Nahstoll. As I was going through this research, I came to a photocopy of a familiar face: it was Thomas Fitzgerald, but sadly, the back was not labeled. Luckily there were two other portraits with it: Fr. Beda O’Connor, OSB; and a priest I recognized on sight – Fr. Roman Weinzapfel, an important 19th-century priest, who, like Fr. O’Connor, is buried at Saint Meinrad.  

(Fr. Weinzapfel, a German immigrant priest, had been imprisoned after a prejudiced and xenophobic accusation was made against him, amid the turbulent anti-immigrant sentiment of the time. His name was ultimately cleared.)

I reached out to Saint Meinrad’s archives and asked if they had any information on Thomas Fitzgerald.

Br. Stanley Rother got back to me. After searching an old descriptive inventory, he found a reference to Thomas Fitzgerald. The reference stated that Fr. Weinzapfel stayed with Thomas after being released from his wrongful imprisonment. Br. Stanley sent me the reference and I noticed a notation referring to Thomas’s house being depicted in “A Trip Thru Indiana in 1840.” (After tracking the book down, I found it was actually titled “A Tour Through Indiana in 1840.”) The section displaying the Fitzgerald house detailed the book’s author, John Parsons, being hosted by Captain Thomas Fitzgerald. And just like that, the mystery was solved.

After four years, we now know the complete story of the locket. It has been concluded that while conducting detailed research on the case of Fr. Weinzapfel, Fr. Martin Nahstoll came across this mourning locket depicting Capt. Thomas Fitzgerald who housed Fr. Weinzapfel in the aftermath of his imprisonment.

Capt. Fitzgerald is a testament to the age-old adage that if you are kind to a priest, it will likely be remembered and mentioned 180 years later in a local diocesan newspaper.

Edward Wilson is the director of the Diocese of Owensboro’s Archives and the Archives of the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph. Comments and questions may be sent to [email protected].

Originally printed in the April 2026 issue of The Western Kentucky Catholic.