Mother Seton, as she is known, earns the first spot in this section because she is the first American-born saint. Pope Paul VI announced the canonization of this New Yorker in 1975.

She was a woman who lived through almost all that can be experienced in a lifetime: religious conversion, travel, marriage, motherhood, financial problems, discrimination, widowhood, betrayal, losing a child, founding a religious order, and taking vows. The recognition of her strong faith throughout what might be called a soap-opera life came in the form of eventual sainthood.

The Anglican Elizabeth

She was born Elizabeth Ann Bayley in New York City. Her father was a professor of anatomy at King's College, now Columbia University, and her maternal grandfather was the rector of St. Andrew's, the Anglican church on Staten Island.

Elizabeth was one of three girls. Her mother died when she was just three; her father eventually remarried, and soon there were six more siblings. Leading the life of a well-to-do young lady, Elizabeth learned to play the piano and speak French. At the appropriate age of nineteen she was married to William Magee Seton.

The couple was happy, and in fairly short order had five children: Anna Maria, William, Richard Bayley, Catherine Josephine, and Rebecca. William Seton was a prosperous merchant, so the couple was not only happy but wealthy as well.

In addition to charity work, Elizabeth also explored her religion during those years, under the tutelage of an assistant to Trinity Church. She spread word of her new enthusiasm for her faith among family members and was overjoyed when her husband finally joined the church. “Willy's heart seemed to be nearer to me for being nearer to his God,” she wrote.

Clouds on the Horizon

A mere six years after their marriage, the Setons' placid life suddenly began to fall apart. Willy's business, a family-owned company, failed, and by 1803 the firm was in bankruptcy.

Tuberculosis, a disease that had plagued the Seton family, now showed up in Willy, and the seriousness was perhaps exacerbated by his worry over the business. To try to halt the progress of the illness, the Setons sailed for Europe, taking their oldest child, Anna Maria, with them and leaving the other four with relatives. To finance the trip, Elizabeth sold the last of her silver, china, and whatever else she owned that would bring cash.

The desperate strategy did not work. The family landed in Leghorn, Italy, and went on to Pisa. Two days after Christmas 1803, William Seton died there.

Elizabeth buried her husband as quickly as Italian law mandated, but she was unable to return to America because of the bad winter weather and the fact that Anna Maria had caught scarlet fever. Her grief was overwhelming, but her enduring faith held fast. She wrote a friend, “If I could forget my God one moment at these times I should go mad — but he hushes all — Be still and know that I am God your Father.” (Elizabeth Seton kept a journal for many years and engaged in exchanges of letters with many family members, friends, and colleagues who helped paint a rounded portrait of a deeply spiritual woman.)

She stayed in Leghorn for four months after her husband's death, befriended by two couples (the men were brothers). During that time she was introduced to Catholicism and became increasingly interested in that faith, to the point of studying the religion.

In 1804 she returned to New York, accompanied by the younger of the two brothers, Antonio Filicchi. Elizabeth was to remain in touch with that family for the rest of her life. They were instrumental in her conversion and there was much letter-writing between them.

Back at home and without her beloved Willy, Elizabeth was forced to set mourning aside and turn her attention to how she would earn a living. Apparently the Bayley family resources could not stretch beyond the Bayley family, because Elizabeth seemed to have received no financial help, or at least not enough, from her father. And with the Seton family business in bankruptcy, there was not likely to be much help from that quarter.

As she looked around New York to see what she could do, Elizabeth was stunned to find friends and even some family members taking a few steps back from her now that she was interested in becoming Catholic. She thought perhaps she could teach school, but those same friends did not want her influencing their children. Elizabeth was looked on with disdain in her Protestant circle, and indeed in all of the predominantly Protestant city.

She set about taking in boarders, a business that limped along for a while. One bright spot for her in that dark time was that she was baptized a Catholic in 1805.

An Answer

Finally the young widow was offered a position by a Catholic religious order in Baltimore, which asked her to found a girls' school. Other women joined Elizabeth, and by 1809, under her leadership, they founded a religious community, the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph. They also established a school for poor children in a village named Emmitsburg, near the Pennsylvania border.

Initially the women lived in a farmhouse, along with Elizabeth's children. From then on, as the order grew, the girls lived in their mother's boarding schools, her two sons in a nearby Catholic school for boys. The new community, which now included eighteen nuns, was approved by Archbishop Carroll of Baltimore in 1812.

Elizabeth was named superior of the order. She modeled it on St. Vincent de Paul's Daughters of Charity, with a few variations in its bylaws allowing for differences between Americans and the French. She called it the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph. The nuns would devote themselves to the education of the poor and to teaching in parochial schools. The nuns' habit was Elizabeth's black mourning dress with a shoulder cape and a black bonnet, which was later replaced by a white one.

From her groundwork grew the huge Catholic parochial school system in the United States. Mother Seton's work spread throughout North America, South America, and Italy, where she still had ties (principally the Filicchi family).

Another Loss

Elizabeth Seton was a strong woman, but when her daughter, Anna Maria, died at the age of sixteen, she experienced a totally different sorrow and test of her spiritual resources. Anna Maria was her oldest child, and the one most like her mother. An added bond between the two was the time they spent together traveling to Italy with Willy, as well as the following months in that country without him.

Her daughter's death was not unexpected: Elizabeth and Anina, as Anna Maria was known, spent much time together during her long illness, talking, praying, and strengthening their faith. On her deathbed Anina took vows as a Sister of Charity, and mother and daughter spoke of being reunited in eternity.

Still, Elizabeth was devastated by Anina's loss and sank into a deep depression. She wrote to a friend, “The separation from my angel has left so new and deep an impression on my mind, that if I was not obliged to live in these dear ones I should unconsciously die in her.”

Serenity

The sharp anguish eventually eased. Elizabeth Seton continued in the huge task of administering and expanding her order, and continued looking after her children, who were never far from her, physically or in her thoughts. When the boys got older, she sent them to Leghorn to learn business from Antonio Filicchi. She died in Emmitsburg in 1821 of tuberculosis.

Mother Seton could have attained sainthood for her devotion in founding and running a religious order that became important in early American education and remains so to this day. But her canonization also reflects her deep spirituality. She was a woman who lived more than half of her life flourishing as a Protestant in New York. When it became apparent that she was about to convert to Catholicism, she suffered discrimination in that city and was not free of it until she moved to Maryland. Despite prejudice, despite her financial problems, not to mention the death of her husband and two children — she lost her youngest daughter, Rebecca (“Bec”), in 1816 when the girl was fourteen — her faith remained strong.

The move toward canonization began in 1907. In 1959 Mother Seton was given the title “Venerable.” In 1963 she was beatified, and she was canonized in 1975. Her feast day is January 4.