Elizabeth Ann Seton

Elizabeth Ann Bayley was born August 28, 1774, in New York City, the daughter of Dr. Richard Bayley, a prominent physician. Raised Episcopalian, she was known for her piety and charitable work from an early age. In 1794 she married William Magee Seton, a wealthy merchant, and the couple had five children.

William's health deteriorated from tuberculosis, and in 1803 the family sailed to Livorno, Italy, hoping the climate would help. He died there in December 1803, leaving Elizabeth a widow at twenty-nine. During her months in Italy the Filicchi family, devout Catholic merchant friends, exposed her to Catholicism — its liturgy, doctrine, and devotion to the Eucharist. This encounter reshaped her faith entirely. After returning to New York, she was received into the Catholic Church on March 14, 1805, at Saint Peter's Church in Lower Manhattan, a conversion that cost her most of her Protestant social support and financial footing.

In 1808, at the invitation of Bishop John Carroll, she moved to Baltimore and opened a school for girls. The following year she moved to Emmitsburg, Maryland, where in 1809 she founded the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph's — the first indigenous religious community of women in the United States. In 1810 she opened Saint Joseph's Free School, providing free Catholic education to poor children and establishing the model for what would become the American parochial school system.

She governed the Sisters of Charity until her death, forming the community's rule along the lines of Saint Vincent de Paul's Daughters of Charity. She died of tuberculosis on January 4, 1821, at Emmitsburg, aged forty-six. She was beatified by Pope John XXIII on March 17, 1963, and canonized by Pope Paul VI on September 14, 1975 — the first person born in what is now the United States to be canonized.