A piano, a writing desk and four children left behind

NEW YORK, October 2, 1803 AD — The baby was just past her first birthday when her mother sailed for Italy and left her in New York. Her mother was Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, who was 29. The baby wasn’t the only child she left. Two boys of six and five and a girl of three stayed too. All four were left with an aunt.

Only Anna Maria, the eldest of the five children, sailed with her parents. She was eight. They left on October 2, 1803 AD.

They went because of her husband, William Magee Seton. He was a New York merchant, and he was ill with a disease called tuberculosis. His doctors had advised a sea voyage.

William Magee Seton’s business had been failing since 1798 AD. In 1800 AD he lost more at sea and was ruined. As a young man he had worked in Leghorn for the Filicchi brothers, who were merchants and bankers. The brothers had known him a long time and thought well of him, so the Setons were sailing to Leghorn.

Four days before the ship sailed, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton wrote a letter to her friend Eliza Sadler. Everyone was calling the voyage “next to madness,” St. Elizabeth Ann Seton told her friend. Then she added: “but you know we reason differently.” St. Elizabeth Ann Seton went on: “We will, dear Eliza, rest upon Him our only strength.”

Everything out of the house

In September the Setons emptied their house in State Street. The house stood just behind the Battery, on the New York waterfront.

The four younger children went to their aunt, Rebecca Seton, who was 22 and their mother’s closest friend. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton sent her writing desk and her piano to the house of her pastor, the Rev. John Henry Hobart of Trinity Church. She asked her pastor to watch over her two sons.

In the same letter to Eliza Sadler, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton wrote: “My heart trembles within me and I can only say, take my darlings often in your arms.”

The first tear

On October 2 the Shepherdess, an American ship, left New York harbour and sailed past the Battery. Relatives and friends waved from the Battery, in front of the house the Setons had emptied. “Our William felt the passing the Battery so much that I scarcely could wave my handkerchief,” St. Elizabeth Ann Seton wrote to Rebecca Seton.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton wrote that her first tear came when she saw her pastor’s house. She called the pastor her “friend and brother.” The study windows were all she could see of the house.

She wrote the letter at twelve o’clock that day. The ship was near the lighthouse at the mouth of the bay. By then her husband was calm again and felt better than he had on shore. A child of about eighteen months was on board. The child made her miss her own baby, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton wrote. Then she wrote: “I neither look behind nor before — only up, — there is my rest, and I want nothing.”

William Magee Seton’s brother had come along for the first day. At ten o’clock on October 3 he left the ship and took the letter ashore. Before he went, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton added a line: “A storm threatens, but I fear not with Him.” She also sent “kisses to my little ones.”

On October 28 the Shepherdess was halfway to Leghorn, and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton wrote home again. Her husband was getting better every day, and she and Anna Maria were well.