Maria McAuley (née Fahy; 1847 – September 19, 1919), later Maria Gilbert, was an American missioner who, along with her husband Jerry McAuley, founded the McAuley Water Street Mission (now the New York City Rescue Mission) to shelter the poor of New York City who were primarily immigrants. The couple were Irish Catholics immigrants who became Protestants and missioners after being saved from a lifestyle of drinking and crime by missionaries. McAuley Mission became the first of over 300 rescue missions in the United States; together, these form the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions. Her second husband was noted New York City architect Bradford Gilbert.
Background
Maria Fahy was born in Ireland in 1847 and was raised in the Roman Catholic faith. When she was a young child, she immigrated to the United States with her parents and lived in Massachusetts. She attended school and a Protestant Sunday school. However, her mother died when she was young and her father left, forcing Fahy to work to support herself.
Fahy moved to New York City and became a waitress and entertainer in the Fourth Ward, a notorious area of Manhattan. Some sources say she became a prostitute or "fallen woman". She admitted to being "a drunkard in a Cherry Street hovel, with only straw for a bed." Another time, she stated, "There was never a more degraded sinner than I was, to my shame it be said. My home was a drunkard's hovel, and the principal thing there was the rum bottle."Around 1864, Fahey met and became romantically involved with the 25-year-old Jerry McAuley. McAuley a self-proclaimed drunkard, and "river thief" who had just served seven years in Sing Sing prison; he received early parale from the fifteen-year sentence he received when he was nineteen years old. The couple lived together on Cherry Street with another couple who shared their interest in drinking heavily. McAuley returned to crime, becoming a fence, smuggler, and thief.
In 1868, Water Street missionaries converted the Catholic McAuley to Protestantism; he had previously expressed an interest in a missionary's teachings while in prison. McAuley invited Fahy to the John Allen MIssion and convinced her to give up alcohol. She moved from the Cherry Street home she shared with McAuley and lived in a mission for women. After several months of attending worship and Bible study at the mission, she moved to the New Jersey countryside to live with a Christian family who helped her rediscover religion and set aside her wayward lifestyle. Apparently her relocation to New Jersey was, in part, an effort of the missionaries to separate Fahey from McAuley, after learning that the cohabitating couple was not married. It also removed Fahey from the city's many temptations.
After her conversion to a religious lifestyle, Fahey visited her father and lived with her older sister in New Bedford, Massachusetts. During her absence from McAuley, she kept in touch by writing letters. Fahey returned to New York City in 1872 after some Christian ladies hired her for missionary work. She was a Bible reader and also provided testimony about her religious conversion in the Fourth Ward's saloons, tenement houses, and "dens of infamy".
Fahy married McAuley in 1872. Their marriage took place at the Howard Mission and Home for Little Wanderers, previously the Fourth Ward Mission, and was attended by a small group of friends.
Missions
On October 8, 1872, the McAuleys founded the Helping Hand for Men, also called the McAuley Water Street Mission, in an old wooden house at 316 Water Street. The mission house was surrounded by rum shops, dance halls, and gambling dens in an area that was frequented by drunkards, thieves, and prostitutes. The purpose of the McAuley Mission was "to provide food, shelter, clothing and hope to people in crisis." It provided free cots for sleeping, as well as bread and coffee.
This mission held daily nondenominational public meetings at 7:30 p.m., along with services at 2:30 p.m. on Sundays. According to a promotional booklet for the mission, its audience included homeless men and women, landsmen, sailors, strangers, the friendless, and anyone interested in Christian service. The meetings lasted an hour and included Bible readings, singing of hymns, and testimonials by individuals who were saved from sin by the "power of Jesus". Maria McAuley played the organ and also spoke to and shook the hands of each attendee after the meeting. The mission did not collect money at its meetings.