Elizabeth Ann Seton

Contents

Elizabeth Ann Seton was an American wife, mother, widow, Catholic convert, educator, and religious foundress whose community helped shape parochial education and organized works of charity in the United States.

Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton SC (August 28, 1774 – January 4, 1821) was an American Catholic educator, known as a founder of the country's parochial school system. Born in New York and reared as an Episcopalian, she married and had five children with her husband William Seton. She converted to Catholicism in 1805 and established the first Catholic girls' school in the nation in Emmitsburg, Maryland. There she also founded the first American congregation of religious sisters, the Sisters of Charity.

On September 14, 1975, Seton was the first person born in what would become the United States to be canonized by the Catholic Church.[4][5][6]

Life

Origins and formation

Elizabeth Ann Bayley grew up in a prominent New York Episcopalian family and learned both disciplined prayer and personal care for people in poverty. She married William Magee Seton in 1794 and bore five children. Business failure, tuberculosis, and William's death in Livorno in 1803 left her a young widow responsible for a household and searching more deeply for God's providence. These circumstances belong to a real human history rather than a devotional legend. Catholic biography attends to family, culture, freedom, and grace without reading a later canonical judgment backward into every childhood event.

Vocation and service

Friendship with Catholic families in Italy drew Seton toward belief in the Real Presence, and she entered the Catholic Church in New York in 1805 despite social and financial cost. Invited to Baltimore, she opened a school and in 1809 established a community at Emmitsburg. Its rule joined Vincentian spirituality, common religious life, education of girls, and service of poor families while she continued her maternal responsibilities. The vocation took shape through prayer, the sacraments, Scripture, and duties toward particular neighbors. Its ecclesial fruit is best understood as a response to Baptism, never as fame pursued for its own sake.

Christian witness

Seton's sanctity cannot be reduced to being the first native-born United States citizen canonized. Bereavement, parenting, debt, conversion, misunderstanding, and the difficult governance of a new community became places of fidelity. Her letters reveal affection, anxiety, firmness, and growth rather than an effortless ascent, while daily Mass and the Eucharist gave coherence to service and prayer. This Christian witness points toward Christ and the universal call to holiness. Remembering it truthfully means neither making suffering desirable nor treating every choice, opinion, or later retelling as if the Catholic Church had canonized it.

The schools associated with Seton became an important root of the American parochial-school tradition, though later institutions developed through many communities and local leaders. Her Catholic commitment coexisted with enduring love for non-Catholic relatives and friends. Honest remembrance therefore resists triumphalism and recognizes both the cost of conversion and the demands of charity across confessional boundaries. A sound account distinguishes documented events, contemporary testimony, and the Church's later judgment. That discipline protects both historical truth and authentic devotion, especially where illness, violence, politics, or disputed memories are involved.

Ecclesial recognition

Cause and present status

Pope John XXIII beatified Elizabeth Ann Seton on 17 March 1963. After the canonical examination of another healing attributed to her intercession, Saint Paul VI canonized her in Saint Peter's Square on 14 September 1975 and explicitly proclaimed her a Saint. Descriptions that leave her at the rank of Blessed are superseded by that definitive act. Cause language is juridically exact: opening an inquiry, recognizing heroic virtues or martyrdom, beatification, and canonization are different acts. The rank stated here follows the latest competent ecclesiastical record available on 30 August 2026.[1][2]

Liturgical and devotional scope

Canonization authorizes public veneration of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton throughout the Catholic Church. The United States keeps her obligatory memorial on 4 January, while communities descended from her foundation observe approved proper calendars. Her title does not turn every institution bearing her name into a shrine or make every object associated with her an authenticated relic.

Biography

Early life

Elizabeth Ann Bayley was born on August 28, 1774, the second child of a socially prominent couple, surgeon Richard Bayley and his wife Catherine Charlton of New York City.[7] The Bayley and Charlton families were among the earliest European settlers in the New York area. Her father's parents were of French Huguenot and English descent and lived in New Rochelle, New York. Numerous Huguenots had emigrated to North America in the late 17th and early 18th centuries at a time of religious persecution in France.

As Chief Health Officer for the Port of New York, her father attended to immigrants disembarking from ships at Staten Island. He also cared for New Yorkers when yellow fever swept through the city (in one outbreak, it killed 700 persons in four months).[8] Bayley later served as the first professor of anatomy at Columbia College.[9]

Elizabeth's mother Catherine was the daughter of a Church of England priest who was rector for 30 years of St. Andrew's Church on Staten Island. Elizabeth was raised in what would eventually become, in the years after the American Revolution, the Episcopal Church.

Her mother, Catherine, died in 1777 when Elizabeth was three years old, possibly due to complications from the birth of her namesake daughter Catherine. The infant died early the following year. Elizabeth's father married Charlotte Amelia Barclay, a member of the Jacobus James Roosevelt family,[7] to provide a mother for his two surviving daughters. The new Mrs. Bayley participated in her church's social ministry and often took young Elizabeth with her on charitable rounds. They visited the poor in their homes to distribute food and needed items.

The couple had five children, but the marriage ended in separation. During the breakup, their stepmother rejected Elizabeth and her older sister. When their father traveled to London for further medical studies, the sisters lived temporarily in New Rochelle with their paternal uncle, William Bayley, and his wife, Sarah (Pell) Bayley. Elizabeth endured a time of darkness, grieving the absence of a second mother, as she later reflected in her journals.

In these journals, Elizabeth showed her love for nature, poetry, and music, especially the piano. Other entries expressed her religious aspirations and favorite passages from her reading, showing her introspection and natural bent toward contemplation. Elizabeth was fluent in French and English, a fine musician, and an accomplished horsewoman.[10]

Marriage and motherhood

On January 25, 1794, at age 19, Elizabeth married William Magee Seton, aged 25, a wealthy businessman in the import trade. Samuel Provoost, the first Episcopal bishop of New York, presided at their wedding.[11] Her husband's father, William Seton (1746–1798), belonged to an impoverished noble Scottish family. He had emigrated to New York in 1758, and became superintendent and part-owner of the iron-works of Ringwood, New Jersey. A loyalist, the senior William Seton was the last royal public notary for the city and province of New York.

He brought his sons William (Elizabeth's future husband) and James into the import-export mercantile firm, the William Seton Company, which became Seton, Maitland, and Company in 1793. The younger William had visited important counting houses in Europe in 1788, was a friend of Filippo Filicchi (a renowned merchant in Leghorn, Italy, with whom his firm traded), and brought the first Stradivarius violin to America.[8]

Marriage and family

Shortly after they married, Elizabeth and William Seton moved into a fashionable residence on Wall Street. Socially prominent in New York society, the Setons belonged to Trinity Episcopal Church, near Broadway and Wall streets. A devout communicant, Elizabeth took John Henry Hobart (later a bishop) as her spiritual director. Along with her sister-in-law Rebecca Mary Seton (1780–1804), who was also her friend and confidante, Elizabeth continued her former stepmother's social ministry—nursing the sick and dying among family, friends, and needy neighbors. Influenced by her father, she became a charter member of The Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children (1797) and served as its treasurer.[12]

When the elder William Seton died, the Seton family fortunes waned during the volatile economic climate preceding the War of 1812, when the US boycotted trade with Great Britain. The couple took in William's six younger siblings, ages seventeen to seven.

The couple already had their own five children: Anna Maria (Annina) (1795–1812), William II (1796–1868), Richard Seton (1798–1823), Catherine (1800–1891) (who was to become the first American to join the Sisters of Mercy) and Rebecca Mary (1802–1816). The much expanded family required a move to the larger Seton family residence.[8]

Widowhood and conversion to Catholicism

A dispute between the United States of America and the French Republic from 1798 to 1800 led to a series of attacks on American shipping. The United Kingdom's blockade of France, and the loss of several of Seton's ships at sea, resulted in William having to declare bankruptcy. The Setons lost their home at 61 Stone Street in lower Manhattan.[11]

The following summer, Elizabeth and the children stayed with her father, who was still the health officer for the Port of New York on Staten Island.[10] From 1801 to 1803, they lived in a house at 8 State Street. This site is now occupied by the Church of Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary (built in 1964).

Through most of their married life, William Seton suffered from tuberculosis. The stress worsened his illness; his doctors sent him to Italy for the warmer climate, with Elizabeth and their eldest daughter as his companions. Upon landing at the port of Leghorn, they were held in quarantine for a month, as authorities feared they might have brought yellow fever from New York. William died there on December 27, 1803.[9] He was buried in the Old English Cemetery in Livorno/Leghorn. Elizabeth and her daughter Anna Maria were received by the families of her late husband's Italian business partners, Filippo and Antonio Filicchi, who introduced her to Catholicism.

After returning to New York as a widow, Seton was received into the Catholic Church on March 14, 1805, by Father Matthew O'Brien, pastor of St. Peter's Church,[12] then the city's only Catholic church. (Anti-Catholic laws had been lifted just a few years before.) A year later, she received the sacrament of Confirmation from the Bishop of Baltimore, John Carroll, the only Catholic bishop in the nation.

To support herself and her children, Seton had started an academy for young ladies, as was common for widows of social standing in that period. After news of her conversion to Catholicism spread, most parents (who were Protestant) withdrew their daughters from her school. In 1807, students attending a local Protestant academy were boarded at her house on Stuyvesant Lane in the Bowery, near St. Mark's Church.[13]

Seton was about to move to Quebec, Canada, which had numerous French-speaking Catholics, when she met a visiting priest, Father Louis William Valentine Dubourg. He was a member of the French émigré community of Sulpician Fathers and then president of St. Mary's College, Baltimore. The Sulpicians had taken refuge in the United States from the religious persecution of the Reign of Terror related to the revolution in France. They were in the process of establishing the first Catholic seminary for the United States, in keeping with the goals of their society. For several years, Dubourg had envisioned a religious school to meet the educational needs of the new nation's small Catholic community.[12]

Contribution to hymnody

Inspired by the words of the first stanza of a well-known hymn, "Jerusalem, my happy home", Seton, on her daughter Anna Marie's deathbed, added original stanzas and wrote that she "turned a music of her own from them".[14]

The hymn was first published before 1820 and was thereafter published in several hymnals in which the tune name is "Jerusalem". A facsimile of the earliest publication with transcriptions in modern notation is available.[15]

Seton was possibly the first American-born woman to have an original hymn tune published and also the first to have a widely sung hymn text (stanzas 2-4) published.[16]

Founder

In 1809, Seton accepted the Sulpicians' invitation and moved to Emmitsburg, Maryland, where they had a mission. A year later, she established the Saint Joseph's Academy and Free School, a school dedicated to Catholic girls' education. This effort was supported financially by Samuel Sutherland Cooper,[9] a wealthy convert and seminarian at the newly established Mount Saint Mary's University begun by John Dubois and the Sulpicians.

On July 31, 1809, Seton established a religious community in Emmitsburg dedicated to the care of children of the poor. This was the first congregation of religious sisters founded in the United States and its school was the first free Catholic school in the country. This modest beginning marked the start of the Catholic parochial school system in the United States.[17] Seton's congregation was initially called the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph's. From that point on, she became known as "Mother Seton". In 1811, the sisters adopted the rules of the Daughters of Charity, co-founded in France by Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac.

Later life and death

The remainder of Seton's life was spent leading and developing the new congregation of sisters. She was described as a charming and cultured person. Her connections to New York society and the accompanying social pressures to leave the new life she had created for herself did not deter her from embracing her religious vocation and charitable mission. The most significant difficulties she faced were internal, stemming from misunderstandings, interpersonal conflicts, and the deaths of two daughters, other loved ones, and young sisters in the community.

Seton died on January 4, 1821, at the age of 46. Her remains are now interred at the National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

Legacy

By 1830, the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph's were running orphanages and schools as far west as Cincinnati and New Orleans. They established the first hospital west of the Mississippi in St. Louis, Missouri.[17]

Seton originally intended to join the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, but the embargo of France due to the Napoleonic Wars prevented this connection. Decades later, in 1850, the Emmitsburg community took steps to merge with the Daughters and become their first American branch, as their foundress had envisioned.[17]

Today, six separate religious congregations trace their roots to the beginnings of the Sisters of Charity in Emmitsburg. In addition to the original community of Sisters at Emmitsburg (now part of the Vincentian order), they are based in New York City;[18] Cincinnati, Ohio;[19] Halifax, Nova Scotia;[20] Convent Station, New Jersey;[21] and Greensburg, Pennsylvania.[22] The community at Convent Station established the Academy of Saint Elizabeth in 1860 and the College of Saint Elizabeth in 1899. Additionally, a church in Bothell, Washington, has been named after her.

Elizabeth Ann Seton has also been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.[23]

Canonization

Theologians approved Seton's spiritual writings on January 15, 1936, and her cause was formally opened on February 28, 1940, granting her the title of Servant of God.[24] In 1952, a miracle involving the healing of 4-year-old Ann O'Neil from leukemia was attributed to the intercession of Seton after a nun sought Seton's intercession for the girl. The miracle was a factor in the beatification of Seton and Seton was beatified by Pope John XXIII on March 17, 1963. The pope said on the occasion, "In a house that was very small, but with ample space for charity, she sowed a seed in America which by Divine Grace grew into a large tree."[25]

Pope Paul VI canonized Seton on September 14, 1975, in a ceremony in St. Peter's Square. In his words, "Elizabeth Ann Seton is a saint. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton is an American. All of us say this with special joy and with the intention of honoring the land and the nation from which she sprang forth as the first flower in the calendar of the saints. Elizabeth Ann Seton was wholly American! Rejoice for your glorious daughter. Be proud of her. And know how to preserve her fruitful heritage."[4] The miracle which led to the canonization of Seton involved the healing of a man, Carl Kalin, in 1963, who was given hours to live after contracting meningitis and having encephalitis in his brain.

Seton's feast day is January 4, the eleventh day of Christmastide and the anniversary of her death.[26]

Elizabeth Ann Seton is honored on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America on January 4.[27][28]

Eponymous institutions

Hospital

The Daughters of Charity Health Network established Bayley Seton Hospital in 1980 on the site of the former Marine Hospital Service hospital in Stapleton, Staten Island.[29] Most of the property is now the Bayley Seton campus of Richmond University Medical Center, while a portion is used by New York Foundling, a Catholic social services organization.

Schools

Seton High School is a parochial all-female, college-preparatory high school in the Price Hill neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. Seton was founded as Mount St. Vincent Academy in 1854. It was also known as Cedar Grove Academy. Cedar Grove was renamed in honor of Elizabeth Ann Seton on September 12, 1927.

Mother Seton School in Emmitsburg, Maryland, is a direct descendant of the Saint Joseph's Academy and Free School.[30] It is located less than a mile from the site of the original school and is sponsored by the Daughters of Charity.[31] Mother Seton School is a private elementary school located in Emmitsburg and enrolls 306 students from pre-kindergarten through 8th grade. Mother Seton School is the 84th-largest private school in Maryland and the 3,381st-largest nationally. It has 15 students to every teacher.[32]

In the Philippines, the Elizabeth Seton School in BF Resort Village, Las Piñas was established in 1975, the year of Seton's canonization. It is the largest Catholic school in the city in terms of population.[33]

Elizabeth Seton College, located in Yonkers, New York, was a college opened to assist young struggling women and men in need of furthering their education, offering Associate of Science or Associate of Occupational Science degrees. It merged with Iona College in 1989.

Seton Hall College (now known as Seton Hall University) in South Orange, New Jersey, was founded in 1856 by Seton's nephew Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley and named after his aunt,[34] as was Seton Hall Preparatory School, an all-boys High School in West Orange, New Jersey, that was formerly associated with the university, but is now independent.

The Seton Hill Schools (now part of Seton Hill University), named for Seton, were founded by the Sisters of Charity in 1885. The university continues to operate in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, under the auspices of the Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill.

Elizabeth Seton High School, an all-girls Catholic school in Bladensburg, Maryland, sponsored by the Daughters of Charity, is named in honor of Seton.

Seton Home Study School (setonhome.org) (Front Royal, Virginia), a Catholic K-12 homeschool, founded in 1983, is named in honor of Seton. It now has over 15,500 students across 54 countries, especially in the Philippines, Canada, and middle east.

Mother Seton Academy in Baltimore, Maryland.

Seton Academy (1963–2016) was a high school in South Holland, Illinois.

Seton Catholic High School (1900–2007) was a high school in Pittston, Pennsylvania.[35]

Seton School in Manassas, Virginia is also named for Mother Seton.

Seton Catholic School (K-8) Hudson, Ohio

Seton Catholic School (PreK-8) in Meadville, PA

Niagara University in Lewiston, New York, near Niagara Falls, also has a dormitory building named after her, called Seton Hall.

St. Elizabeth Seton is a K-9 school in Edmonton, Alberta

Seton Catholic College, a high school in Perth, Western Australia, was founded in 1990 upon the merging of De Vialar College and St Brendan's College. With the merge, the school was placed under the patronage of Elizabeth Ann Seton.

Seton La-Salle Catholic High School in Pittsburgh, PA established in 1980 is named after her. Elizabeth Ann Seton, an all girls high school and South Hills Catholic, an all boys school merged together to form one co-ed Catholic high school in the South Hills of Pittsburgh.

St. Seton's Secondary School is a mixed post-primary school located on Le Fanu Road, Ballyfermot, Dublin 10 (D10 X592). Formed in 2023 by the amalgamation of Caritas College, St. John's College De La Salle, and St. Dominic's College, it serves as a central Catholic school in the community with around 761 students in 2026.

Churches

Several Catholic churches are named for Seton. The first parish named in her honor, Blessed Elizabeth Ann Seton, was established in 1963 in Shrub Oak, New York, with a school opening in 1966, staffed by the Sisters of Charity.

Upon her canonization in 1975, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church was established in Crofton, Maryland,[36] in the same Archdiocese of Baltimore where she had founded Saint Joseph's Academy and Free School.

As of 2018, there are churches in her name in more than 40 states of the United States, plus Canada and Italy.[37]

Buildings

The College of Mount Saint Vincent in Bronx, New York, was founded by the Sisters of Charity of New York and traces its lineage to Seton. It features the Elizabeth Seton Library and the Italian Renaissance-style Seton Hall, with a cornerstone set by John Cardinal Farley in November 1911.

Niagara University in Lewiston, New York, near Niagara Falls, also has a dormitory building named after her, called Seton Hall.

Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, has a residence hall named after her, called Elizabeth Ann Seton Hall.

The parish hall at St. James Catholic Church in Gadsden, AL is named Seton Hall in honor of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton.

Charities

Seton Villa, a small charity for providing accommodation for women with disabilities, was established in 1966 by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul in Sydney, Australia.[38]

Film versions of the biography

Several films have been on the life of Seton. One was the 2025 mini-documentary made by the communication team at Seton Hall University, a university named after Seton.[39] In 1980, the U.S. made-for-television biographical drama film about Seton, A Time for Miracles was released on national television.[40][41]

Collected writings

  • Bayley Seton, Elizabeth (2000). Bechtle, Regina; Metz, Judith (eds.). Collected Writings. Vol. I: Correspondence and Journals 1793–1808. New York: New City Press. ISBN 1-56548-148-8.
  • Bayley Seton, Elizabeth (2002). Bechtle, Regina; Metz, Judith (eds.). Collected Writings. Vol. II: Correspondence and Journals 1808–1820. New York: New City Press. ISBN 1-56548-170-4.
  • Bayley Seton, Elizabeth (2006). Bechtle, Regina; Metz, Judith (eds.). Collected Writings. Vol. IIIa: Spiritual Writings, Notebooks, and Other Documents. New York: New City Press. ISBN 1-56548-249-2.
  • Bayley Seton, Elizabeth (2006). Bechtle, Regina; Metz, Judith (eds.). Collected Writings. Vol. IIIb: Spiritual Writings, Notebooks, and Other Documents. New York: New City Press. ISBN 1-56548-249-2.

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Foundress and first superior of the Sisters of Charity in the United States, b. in New York City, 28 Aug., 1774, of non-Catholic parents of high position; d. at Emmitsburg, Maryland, 4 Jan., 1821.[3]

Her father, Dr. Richard Bayley (b. Connecticut and educated in England), was the first professor of anatomy at Columbia College and eminent for his work as health officer of the Port of New York. Her mother, Catherine Charlton, daughter of an Anglican minister of Staten Island, N.Y., died when Elizabeth was three yeas old, leaving two other young daughters. The father married again, and among the children of this second marriage was Guy Charleton Bayley, whose convert son, James Roosevelt Bayley, became Archbishop of Baltimore. Elizabeth always showed great affection for her stepmother, who was a devout Anglican, and for her stepbrothers and sisters. Her education was chiefly conducted by her father, a brilliant man of great natural virtue, who trained her to self-restraint as well as in intellectual pursuits. She read industriously, her notebooks indicating a special interest in religious and historical subjects. She was very religious, wore a small crucifix around her neck, and took great delight in reading the Scriptures, especially the Psalms, a practice she retained until her death.

She was married on 25 Jan., 1794, in St. Paul's Church, New York, to William Magee Seton, of that city, by Bishop Prevoost. In her sister-in-law, Rebecca Seton, she found the "friend of her soul", and as they went about on missions of mercy they were called the "Protestant Sisters of Charity". Business troubles culminated on the death of her father-in-law in 1798. Elizabeth and her husband presided over the large orphaned family; she shared his financial anxieties, aiding him with her sound judgment. Dr. Bayley's death in 1801 was a great trial to his favourite child. In her anxiety for his salvation she had offered to God, during his fatal illness, the life of he infant daughter Catherine. Catherine's life was spared, however, she died at the age of ninety, as Mother Catherine of the Sisters of Mercy, New York. In 1803 Mr. Seton's health required a sea voyage; he started with his wife and eldest daughter for Leghorn, where the Filicchi brothers, business friends of the Seton firm, resided. The other children, William, Richard, Rebecca, and Catherine, were left to the care of Rebecca Seton.

From a journal which Mrs. Seton kept during her travels we learn of her heroic effort to sustain the drooping spirits of her husband during the voyage, followed by a long detention in quarantine, and until his death at Pisa (27 Dec., 1803). She and her daughter remained for some time with the Filicchi families. While with these Catholic families and in the churches of Italy Mrs. Seton first began to see the beauty of the Catholic Faith. Delayed by her daughter's illness and then by her own, she sailed for home accompanied by Antonio Filicchi, and reached New York on 3 June, 1804. Her sister-in-law, Rebecca, died in July. A time of great spiritual perplexity began for Mrs. Seton, whose prayer was, "If I am right Thy grace impart still in the right to say. If I am wrong Oh, teach my heart to find the better way." Mr. Hobart (afterwards an Anglican bishop), who had great influence over her, used every effort to dissuade her from joining the Catholic Church, while Mr. Filicchi presented the claims of the true religion and arranged a correspondence between Elizabeth and Bishop Cheverus. Through Mr. Filicchi she also wrote to Bishop Carroll. Elizabeth meanwhile added fasting to her prayers for light. The result was that on Ash Wednesday, 14 March, 1805, she was received into the Church by Father Matthew O'Brien in St. Peter's Church, Barclay St., New York. On 25 March she made her first Communion with extraordinary fervour; even the faint shadow of this sacrament in the Protestant Church had had such an attraction for her that she used to hasten from one church to another to receive it twice each Sunday. She well understood the storm that her conversion would raise among her Protestant relatives and friends at the time she most needed their help. Little of her husband's fortune was left, but numerous relatives would have provided amply for her and her children had not this barrier been raised. She joined an English Catholic gentleman named White, who, with his wife, was opening a school for boys in the suburbs of New York, but the widely circulated report that this was a proselytizing scheme forced the school to close.

A few faithful friends arranged for Mrs. Seton to open a boarding-house for some of the boys of a Protestant school taught by the curate of St. Mark's. In January, 1806, Cecilia Seton, Elizabeth's young sister-in-law, became very ill and begged to see the ostracized convert; Mrs. Seton was sent for, and became a constant visitor. Cecilia told her that she desired to become a Catholic. When Cecilia's decision was known threats were made to have Mrs. Seton expelled from the state by the Legislature. On her recovery Cecilia fled to Elizabeth for refuge and was received into the Church. She returned to her brother's family on his wife's death. Mrs. Seton's boarding-house for boys had to be given up. Her sons had been sent by the Filicchis to Georgetown College. She hoped to find a refuge in some convent in Canada, where her teaching would support her three daughters. Bishop Carroll did not approve, so she relinquished this plan. Father Dubourg, S. S., from St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, met her in New York, and suggested opening in Baltimore a school for girls. After a long delay and many privations, she and her daughters reached Baltimore on Corpus Christi, 1808. Her boys were brought there to St. Mary's College, and she opened a school next to the chapel of St. Mary's Seminary and was delighted with the opportunities for the practice of her religion, for it was only with the greatest difficulty she was able to get to daily Mass and Communion in New York. The convent life for which she had longed ever since her stay in Italy now seemed less impracticable. Her life was that of a religious, and her quaint costume was fashioned after one worn by certain nuns in Italy. Cecilia Conway of Philadelphia, who had contemplated going to Europe to fulfill her religious vocation, joined her; soon other postulants arrived, while the little school had all the pupils it could accommodate.

Mr. Cooper, a Virginian convert and seminarian, offered $10,000 to found an institution for teaching poor children. A farm was bought half a mile from the village of Emmitsburg and two miles from Mt. St. Mary's College. Meanwhile Cecilia Seton and her sister Harriet came to Mrs. Seton in Baltimore. As a preliminary to the formation of the new community, Mrs. Seton took vows privately before Archbishop Carroll and her daughter Anna. In June, 1808, the community was transferred to Emmitsburg to take charge of the new institution. The great fervour and mortification of Mother Seton, imitated by her sisters, made the many hardships of their situation seem light. In Dec., 1809, Harriet Seton, who was received into the Church at Emmitsburg, died there, and Cecilia in Apr., 1810. Bishop Flaget was commissioned in 1810 by the community to obtain in France the rules of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. Three of these sisters were to be sent to train the young community in the spirit of St. Vincent de Paul, but Napoleon forbade them to leave France. The letter announcing their coming is extant at Emmitsburg. The rule, however, with some modifications, was approved by Archbishop Carroll in Jan., 1812, and adopted. Against her will, and despite the fact that she had also to care for her children, Mrs. Seton was elected superior. Many joined the community; Mother Seton's daughter, Anna, died during her novitiate (12 March, 1812), but had been permitted to pronounce her vows on her death-bed. Mother Seton and the eighteen sisters made their vows on 19 July, 1813. The fathers superior of the community were the Sulpicians, Fathers Dubourg, David, and Dubois. Father Dubois held the post for fifteen yeas and laboured to impress on the community the spirit of St. Vincent's Sisters of Charity, forty of whom he had had under his care in France. The fervour of the community won admiration everywhere. The school for the daughters of the well-to-do prospered, as it continues to do (1912), and enabled the sisters to do much work among the poor. In 1814 the sisters were given charge of an orphan asylum in Philadelphia; in 1817 they were sent to New York. The previous year (1816) Mother Seton's daughter, Rebecca, after long suffering, died at Emmitsburg; her son Richard, who was placed with the Filicchi firm in Italy, died a few years after his mother. William, the eldest, joined the United States Navy and died in 1868. The most distinguished of his children are Most. Rev. Robert Seton, Archbishop of Heliopolis (author of a memoir of his grandmother, "Roman Essays", and many contributions to the "American Catholic Quarterly" and other reviews), and William Seton (q.v.).

Mother Seton had great facility in writing. Besides the translation of many ascetical French works (including the life of Saint Vincent de Paul, and of Mlle. Le Gras) for her community she has left copious diaries and correspondence that show a soul all on fire with the love of God and zeal for souls. Great spiritual desolation purified her soul during a great portion of her religious life, but she cheerfully took the royal road of the cross. For several years the saintly bishop (then Father) Bruti was her director. The third time she was elected mother (1819) she protested that it was the election of the dead, but she lived for two years, suffering finally from a pulmonary affection. Her perfect sincerity and great charm aided her wonderfully in he work of sanctifying souls. In 1880 Cardinal Gibbons (then Archbishop) urged the steps be taken toward her canonization. The result of the official inquiries in the cause of Mother Seton, held in Baltimore during several years, were brought to Rome by special messenger, and placed in the hands of the postulator of the cause on 7 June, 1911.

Her cause is entrusted to the Priests of the Congregation of the Mission, whose superior general in Paris is also superior of the Sisters of Charity with which the Emmitsburg community was incorporated in 1850, after the withdrawal of the greater number of the sisters (at the suggestion of Archbishop Hughes) of the New York houses in 1846. This union had been contemplated for some time, but the need of a stronger bond at Emmitsburg, shown by the New York separation, hastened it. It was effected with the loss of only the Cincinnati community of six sisters. With the Newark and Halifax offshoots of the New York community and the Greenburg foundation from Cincinnati, the sisters originating from Mother Seton's foundation number (1911) about 6000. The original Emittsburg community now wearing the cornette and observing the rule just as St. Vincent gave it, naturally surpasses any of the others in number. It is found in about thirty dioceses in the United States, and forms a part of the worldwide sisterhood, whilst the others are rather diocesan communities.

13 vols. of letters, diaries, and documents by Mother Seton as well as information concerning her, are in the archives of the mother-house at Emmitsburg, Maryland; ROBERT SETON, Memoirs, Letter and Journal of Elizabeth Seton (2 vols., New York, 1869); BARBEREY, Elizabeth Seton (6th ed., 2 vols., Paris, 1892); WHITE, Life of Mrs. Eliza. A. Seton (10th ed., New York, 1904); SADLIER, Elizabeth Seton, Foundress of the Amer. Sisters of Charity (New York, 1905); BELLOC, Historic Nuns (2nd ed., London, 1911).

B. Randolph.

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