Father Drumgoole used to divide his time between the Mission's facilities in Manhattan and at Mount Loretto. On Sunday, March 11, 1888, he boarded a Staten Island Rapid Transit train at the Pleasant Plains station, very near the orphanage, and rode it to the ferry to Manhattan at St. George. Upon arriving, he found that no ferries were running because the Great Blizzard of 1888 had begun and was causing wind gusts that may have exceeded 80 miles per hour in some places.