MARY "MAE" KATE FOLEY FITZPATRICK BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH (Created with Perplexity AI)

 

Mary “Mae” Kate Foley Fitzpatrick

September 9, 1897 – 1957

McGrade Family History project · November 2026

A Daughter of Irish Immigrants

Mary Kate Foley, whom her family would always call Mae, was born on September 9, 1897, at 520 West 50th Street on Manhattan’s West Side, a few blocks from the Hudson River [1]. Her parents, Thomas Foley and Mary McManus, had both been born in Ireland. Thomas was thirty and Mary twenty-seven when Mae arrived [1][2]. She was their third child, and her two older siblings were living when she was born. A neighborhood doctor, F. W. Hamlin of West 48th Street, attended the birth and filed her certificate eight days later [1].

Mae’s birth certificate: Mary Kate Foley, born September 9, 1897, at 520 West 50th Street, daughter of Thomas Foley and Mary (McManus) Foley, both of Ireland.

Growing Up on the West Side

Mae grew up in New York City, where the census found the family in 1900 [2]. The household kept growing. Her sister Catherine was born about 1908, when Mae was eleven, and her brother William about 1910 [2]. On June 1, 1915, when the New York State census taker came by, seventeen-year-old Mae was still living at home in Manhattan as a daughter of the house [2].

A New Year’s Day Bride

By the end of 1919 Mae was living at 521 West 52nd Street. A young man named Joseph Aloysius Fitzpatrick lived around the corner at 424 West 53rd Street. He was a New Yorker like Mae and a metal caster by trade, and he also served his country as a seaman in the U.S. Navy [3][4][5]. On New Year’s Day 1920, Mae, twenty-two, and Joseph, twenty-one, were married at St. Ambrose Church, 539 West 54th Street, by the Reverend Francis J. Smith. Catherine Fitzpatrick and Patrick Joseph Moran stood up with them as witnesses [3].

A Family in Queens

Mae and Joseph had three children [2]. Their son, Joseph Jr., was born on September 16, 1922 [6]. When the New York State census was taken on June 1, 1925, Mae was keeping her own home in New York City, listed as the wife of the household [2]. A daughter, Catherine, was born about 1925 [2][7]. A second daughter, Marion Theresa, followed on April 29, 1928, born in Astoria, the Queens neighborhood across the East River from Manhattan [7]. By 1930 the Fitzpatricks had made their home in Queens [2].

Joseph worked as a house painter, but the work dried up in the Great Depression, and he last held a job in June 1933. He also suffered from rheumatic heart disease [4]. By 1938 the family was living at 25-19 44th Street, in the Long Island City section of Queens beside Astoria. There, on January 15, 1938, after eighteen years of marriage, Joseph died at the age of thirty-nine. Mae gave the details for his death certificate [4]. He was buried at Long Island National Cemetery on January 18 [4][5]. Mae was a forty-year-old widow with three children. Joseph Jr. was fifteen, Catherine about twelve, and Marion nine [2][4][6][7].

Raising Her Children Alone

Mae kept her family together in New York City, where the census taker found her, forty-two years old, and her children on April 1, 1940 [2]. That September, just after his eighteenth birthday, her son enlisted in the New York National Guard, giving his home as Astoria. His unit, the 258th Field Artillery, was soon called into federal service [6]. By 1942 Private First Class Joseph F. Fitzpatrick was serving with the 107th Coast Artillery. On June 7, 1942, the Army transport Sicilien, carrying him and other soldiers, was torpedoed by a German submarine south of the Dominican Republic. Forty-six of the seventy-seven people aboard were lost, and Mae’s son, only nineteen, was among them [8][9][10].

The Army listed him as missing. On July 6, 1943, it officially declared him dead [6]. He was awarded the Purple Heart, and his name is carved on the East Coast Memorial in Battery Park, Manhattan, facing the Statue of Liberty [9]. In five years she had lost her husband and her only son.

With Marion and Skippy in Astoria

Mae’s daughters grew up and married. On June 26, 1949, Marion married Stephen Joseph “Skippy” McGrade, an Astoria boy [11]. When the census taker came on April 4, 1950, Mae, fifty-two and widowed, was living with the newlyweds on the first floor of 22-68 42nd Street in Astoria. She was listed as keeping house, as was Marion, while Skippy worked as an iron fabricator [12]. Her elder daughter, Catherine, married and later settled in East Meadow, Long Island, where she raised her sons, Billy and Richard Badnow [7].

The 1950 census: Stephan J. McGrade, 25; his wife, Marian, 21; and his mother-in-law, Mary Fitzpatrick, 52, at 22-68 42nd Street, Astoria.

Her Last Years

Mae Fitzpatrick died in New York City in 1957, at the age of sixty [2]. She had spent her whole life in the city: born on the West Side of Manhattan, married there, and widowed in Queens, where she raised her children.

Legacy

Mae’s life spanned the immigrant West Side of the 1900s, the hard years of the Depression, and the losses of the Second World War. She buried a husband at thirty-nine and gave a son to her country, and she still kept her family together. Her daughters carried her forward. Through Marion, who lived to ninety-four, Mae has a granddaughter, Kathy Tiberia; a grandson, the late Stephen McGrade Jr.; and great-grandchildren, Dr. Patrick McGrade and Sarah Katherine McGrade [7][13]. Through Catherine, she has grandsons Billy and Richard Badnow [7].

References

1. City of New York, Department of Health. Certificate and Record of Birth No. 38646, Mary Kate Foley, September 9, 1897, Manhattan (B-M-1897-0038646). NYC Municipal Archives, Historical Vital Records. https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov/view/854072
2. McGrade family tree, compiled by Frances Freeman (vital and census entries for Mary “Mae” Kate Foley, including 1900 U.S. and 1915 and 1925 New York State census residences, siblings Catherine and William, and her 1957 death), November 2026.
3. City of New York, Department of Health. Certificate and Record of Marriage No. 388, Joseph A. Fitzpatrick and Mary Foley, January 1, 1920, Manhattan (M-M-1920-0000388). NYC Municipal Archives, Historical Vital Records. https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov/view/9037854
4. City of New York, Department of Health. Certificate of Death No. 447, Joseph A. Fitzpatrick, January 15, 1938, Queens (D-Q-1938-0000447). NYC Municipal Archives, Historical Vital Records. https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov/search
5. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Nationwide Gravesite Locator. Fitzpatrick, Joseph Aloysious [sic], d. January 15, 1938, SEA2CL, U.S. Navy; Long Island National Cemetery, Section F, Site 2638. https://gravelocator.cem.va.gov/ngl/
6. New York State Military Museum. “27th Infantry Division, World War Two: Men Who Were Federalized in 1940, Last Names Beginning with F” (Joseph F. Fitzpatrick, born Sept. 16, 1922, ASN 20248835, Astoria). https://museum.dmna.ny.gov/unit-history/conflict/world-war-2-1939-1945/27th-infantry-division-world-war-two/27th-infantry-division-world-war-two-men-who-were-federalized-1940/27th-division-world-war-two-men-who-were-federalized-1940-last-names-beginning-f
7. “Marion McGrade.” Obituary. Turrentine-Jackson-Morrow Funeral Home, Frisco, TX, 2023. https://www.turrentinejacksonmorrow.com/obituaries/marion-mcgrade
8. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. World War II unaccounted-for, New York (Fitzpatrick, Joseph F., Pfc, 20248835, USAT Sicilien; 107 Coast Artillery Regiment, June 7, 1942). https://www.dpaa.mil/portals/85/Documents/WWIIAccounting/new_york.html
9. American Battle Monuments Commission, East Coast Memorial, Battery Park, New York (memorial listing via Interment.net: Fitzpatrick, Joseph F., Pfc, 107th Coast Artillery Regiment, died June 7, 1942, Purple Heart). https://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries-memorials/about-east-coast-memorial/ ; https://www.interment.net/data/us/ny/new-york/east-coast-memorial/records-e-g.htm
10. “USAT Sicilien.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAT_Sicilien
11. “Stephen Joseph McGrade Sr.” Obituary. Turrentine-Jackson-Morrow Funeral Home, Frisco, TX, 2021. https://www.turrentinejacksonmorrow.com/obituaries/stephen-joseph-mcgrade
12. U.S. Census Bureau. 1950 Census of Population, New York, Queens, enumeration district 41-654, sheet 6, lines 18–20, household of Stephan J. McGrade (Mary Fitzpatrick, mother-in-law, 52, widowed). National Archives. https://1950census.archives.gov/search/?county=Queens&name=McGrade&page=1&size=10&state=NY
13. “Stephen Joseph McGrade Jr.” Obituary. Dallas Morning News, August 13, 2003. https://obits.dallasnews.com/us/obituaries/dallasmorningnews/name/stephen-mcgrade-obituary?id=28105967