Elizabeth Ann Seton

          Elizabeth Ann Seton was the first person born in the United States to be canonized a saint.  Born in New York City, as Elizabeth Ann Bayley, she was the second child of a prominent Episcopal family, among the earliest settlers in New York.  Her father was a surgeon from New Rochelle and her mother was the daughter of an Episcopal priest serving on Staten Island.  At the age of three, Seton’s mother died, possibly from complications from giving birth to the couple’s third daughter, who died later the same year.  Elizabeth’s father remarried and had more children, but when that second marriage ended through separation, Elizabeth’s stepmother rejected Elizabeth and her older sister.  It was a difficult time of darkness for her.  Elizabeth was a learned young woman who played the piano, rode horses, spoke French, and showed an interest in religion.

          At the age of 19, on January 25, 1774, Elizabeth married a wealthy businessman named William Magee Seton.   The couple moved to Wall Street and had five children, three daughters and two sons.  They would also come to care for many of William’s siblings after the death of William’s father.  Sick with tuberculosis, William’s doctors suggested the warmer climate of Italy might help him.  William’s business involved importing goods and shipping, so he had some business partners in Italy.  In 1803, Elizabeth and their oldest daughter accompanied William to Italy.  Unfortunately, he died while awaiting release from quarantine.  William’s Italian business partners looked after the now widowed Elizabeth and her daughter before their return to New York, during which time she was introduced to Catholicism through them.  She was received into the Catholic Church in 1805.  The first Bishop of the United States, John Carroll, administered the sacrament of confirmation to Elizabeth a year later.

          In 1808, the Sulpicians established Mount St. Mary’s, the first seminary in the United States, in Emmitsburg, Maryland. They invited Elizabeth to come to Maryland to establish a school for the new Catholic community. Struggling to support her family, with social society not accepting her conversion to Catholicism, she accepted. In 1809, Seton moved to Emmitsburg and established the St. Joseph’s Academy and Free School to educate Catholic girls. Many consider this the birth of parochial schools in the United States. She also founded the first women’s religious community in the United States, the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, for which she adapted the Vincentian rule of the Daughters of Charity to govern their life and with whom the order would merge after her death. (American Saints and Causes also features another Sister of Charity: Miriam Teresa Demjanovich.) Then-Fr. Simon Bruté, also featured on American Saints and Causes, joined Mount St. Mary’s in 1812 as a teacher and vice president. Bruté would serve as Mother Seton’s spiritual director until her death. Before her death in 1821 at the age of 46, Seton would send her sisters to establish schools, orphanages and hospitals across the United States, in cities such as Cincinnati, New Orleans, St. Louis.

          Mother Seton is considered a patron saint of widows.  The National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton is located in Emmitsburg, Maryland.  Pilgrims can pray before her remains entombed in the Altar of Relics in the Basilica. There is also a museum showcasing her life and reenactments of life from the time of Mother Seton.