Raised by the Church: Growing up in New York City's Catholic Orphanages

4. The Sisters of Mercy: A Tale of Two Cities

4 The Sisters of Mercy: A Tale of Two Cities In 1846, a small band of nuns from the Order of the Sisters of Mercy made the long and arduous journey from Dublin to New York City. They came after New York’s powerful Archbishop John Hughes himself traveled to the Mother House in Dublin specifically to recruit members of their order. Hughes was convinced that young women who came as immigrants to New York were in need of a House of Mercy like that in Dublin, where they could find shelter in a dangerous urban environment. He wanted the house to be for the “women of Ireland arriving in this city, young, pure, innocent, unacquainted with the snares of the world, and the dangers to which poverty and inexperience would expose them in a foreign land.” The Sisters of Mercy who responded to the archbishop’s request were young and idealistic. They were the children of wealth and privilege, members of the Irish elite. Their founder, Mother Mary Catherine McAuley, was an orphaned heiress who started the order in Ireland two decades earlier. Their mandate was to continue the work begun in North America by the order’s pioneering nun, Mother Frances Xavier Warde, and her six companion sisters, who were working with the poor in Pittsburgh. The journey from Ireland to New York—which in 1846 took four to six weeks—was daunting. Ships were packed beyond capacity; travelers often suffered from seasickness; and deaths from cholera and typhus were common. Most vessels did not have a doctor aboard. 28 | raised by the church As soon as they reached shore, the sisters moved into the Convent of Mercy at the corner of Houston and Mulberry Streets in Manhattan. They were profoundly shocked by the illiteracy and lack of cultural sophistication they found among the masses of starving, uneducated immigrants whom they had come to serve. Being upperclass ladies of good breeding, their first project was the establishment of a circulating library of the “great” Catholic works. The books were written in English; the immigrants were illiterate, and even if they could read, most spoke only Gaelic or German. To state it gently, their effort was ineffectual. But the sisters were a quick study, and by November 1850 they not only understood their challenge but had visited at least eight hundred of the sick and dying poor in their“cellars and garrets.”They visited prisoners in the Tombs detention complex twice a week, and opened the convent regularly to the poor, dispensing clothing, shoes, food, and other miscellaneous items. When requested, they also provided religious instruction. The sisters worked closely with the St. Vincent de Paul Society, visiting the city’s almshouses and prisons . They founded their own homes for immigrant girls—a halfway house between dependency and work, where the sisters provided spiritual guidance, taught basic skills, and helped women find jobs. On September 12, 1855, nine years after their arrival in the United States, six Sisters of Mercy left their convent in Manhattan and boarded the ferry for the short trip to Fulton Landing in Brooklyn. They were moving across the river at the urgent bidding of Brooklyn’s Bishop John Loughlin, who had requested that the order provide him with sisters to teach at St. James, a new nine-room parish school on Jay Street across from the St. James Cathedral. The school still stands at the corner of Jay and Chapel Streets. It is a simple, three-story red brick building; in 1855, it was one of many low-rise constructions in the immigrant community. Today it exists in sharp contrast to the office buildings and residential skyscrapers that loom over it in a gentrified neighborhood. The Sisters of Mercy | 29 The Brooklyn Eagle, Brooklyn’s local afternoon paper, reported the event on September 28: “A fine residence has been provided for them by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Loughlin, near the cathedral. They will have a large free school under their care, and will attend to the visitation of the sick and the instruction of the ignorant, in accordance with the spirit of their holy rule. In process of time they will hope to establish a House of Mercy adapted to the necessities of the growing Diocese of Brooklyn.” When they arrived, the Order of the Sisters of Mercy came to a young city that seemed in a great hurry...