page_title: Fanny Crosby
section_title: 1880–1900
hierarchical_section_title: Fanny Crosby / Rescue missions and later life / 1880–1900
caption_attribution_description: English: The Bowery Rescue Mission in New York City.
context_page_description: Frances Jane van Alstyne, more commonly known as Fanny Crosby, was an American mission worker, poet, lyricist, and composer. She was one of the most prolific hymnists in history, writing more than 8,000 hymns and gospel songs, with more than 100 million copies printed, despite being blind from shortly after birth. She is also known for her teaching and her rescue mission work. By the end of the 19th century, she was a household name.
  Crosby was known as the "Queen of Gospel Song Writers" and as the "Mother of modern congregational singing in America", with most American hymnals containing her work. Her gospel songs were "paradigmatic of all revival music", and Ira Sankey attributed the success of the Moody and Sankey evangelical campaigns largely to Crosby's hymns. Some of Crosby's best-known songs include "Pass Me Not, O Gentle Saviour", "Blessed Assurance", "Jesus Is Tenderly Calling You Home", "Praise Him, Praise Him", "Rescue the Perishing", and "To God Be the Glory". Some publishers were hesitant to have so many hymns by one person in their hymnals, so Crosby used nearly 200 different pseudonyms during her career.
context_section_description: In 1880, aged 60, Crosby "made a new commitment to Christ to serve the poor" and to devote the rest of her life to home missionary work. She continued to live in a dismal flat at 9 Frankfort Street, near one of the worst slums in Manhattan, until about 1884. From this time, she increased her involvement in various missions and homes.
  During the next three decades, she dedicated her time as "Aunty Fanny" to work at various city rescue missions, including the McAuley Water Street Mission, the Bowery Mission, the Howard Mission, the Cremore Mission, the Door of Hope, and other skid row missions. Additionally, she spoke at YMCAs, churches, and prisons about the needs of the urban poor. Additionally, she was a passionate supporter of Frances Willard and the Women's Christian Temperance Union and its endeavors to urge either abstinence or moderation in the use of alcohol.
  For example, Crosby wrote the words for the song "The Red Pledge" before 1879, which advocated total abstinence from imbibing alcohol.
  From about 1880, Crosby attended and supported the Helping Hand for Men in Manhattan (better known as the Water Street Mission), "America's first rescue mission", which was founded by a married couple to minister to alcoholics and the unemployed. Jerry McAuley was a former alcoholic and thief who became a Christian in Sing Sing prison in 1864, and his wife Maria (c.(1847 – September 19, 1919) was a self-described "river thief" and "fallen woman". Crosby often attended the Water Street Mission, "conversing and counseling with those she met".
  Crosby supported the Bowery Mission in Manhattan for two decades, beginning in November 1881. The Bowery Mission welcomed the ministry of women and she worked actively, often attending and speaking in the evening meetings. She addressed large crowds attending the anniversary service each year until the building was razed in a fire in 1897. She would also recite a poem which she'd written for the occasion, many of which were set to music by Victor Benke, the Mission's volunteer organist from 1893–97. Among the songs that she and Benke collaborated on were six published in 1901: "He Has Promised", "There's a Chorus Ever Ringing", "God Bless Our School Today", "Is There Something I Can Do?", "On Joyful Wings", and "Keep On Watching".
  Jerry and Maria McAuley started the Cremorne Mission in 1882 in the Cremorne Garden at 104 West 32nd Street, as a "beachhead in a vast jungle of vice and debauchery known as Tenderloin" (near Sixth Avenue). Crosby attended the nightly 8 pm services, where gospel songs were often sung that were written by her and Doane, including "ballads recalling mother's prayers, reciting the evils of intemperance, or envisioning agonizing deathbed scenes intending to arouse long-buried memories and strengthen resolves". She was inspired to write a prayer after the death of Jerry McAuley in 1884 which was later included in rescue song books:
  Lord, behold in Thy compassion
  
  Those who kneel before Thee now;
  
  They are in a sad condition
  
  None can help them, Lord, but Thou.
  
  They are lost, but do not leave them
  
  In their dreary path to roam;
  
  There is pardon, precious pardon
  
  If to Thee by faith they come.
  After McAuley's death, Crosby continued to support the Cremorne Mission, now led by Samuel Hopkins Hadley.
  Some of the city missions with which Crosby worked were operated by proponents of Wesleyan/Holiness doctrine, including the Door of Hope rescue home founded by socialite Emma Whittemore on October 25, 1890 in a house belonging to A.B. Simpson, intended as "a refuge and a home for girls of the better class who have been tempted from home and right", and to rescue "fallen girls".
caption: Bowery Mission
exif: {}