Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

Her father, Dr. Richard Bayley, taught anatomy at Columbia College and served as health officer of the port. Her mother, Catherine Charlton Bayley, died in 1777 AD, when the child was three. Her younger sister Catharine died the next year, at two.

At four she sat alone on a step of the doorway while that child lay in her coffin. Dr. Bayley took her education almost entirely into his own hands. He would not let music, French and drawing crowd out English, needlework and housekeeping.

On January 25, 1794 AD she married the merchant William Magee Seton at Trinity Church, not yet twenty. Five children were born to them in a few years. When her father-in-law died she became at once the mother of six more.

From 1798 AD the commercial crisis stopped the prosperity of her husband's house. In 1801 AD her father found fever aboard an Irish emigrant ship at the Staten Island quarantine. He went home to his bed that afternoon and died seven days after.

Her husband's health broke down, and the brig Shepherdess sailed for Italy on October 2, 1803 AD. She went with him, and with their eldest daughter Anna Maria, then in her ninth year. The ship reached the mole of Livorno on November 18 and was refused landing.

Theirs was the first ship to bring the news that yellow fever had broken out in New York. The next day they were shut inside the quarantine station, in a cold and bare room. William Magee Seton died at a quarter past seven on the morning of December 27, 1803 AD.

At Livorno the Filicchi brothers kept her and her daughter and put Catholic books into her hands. On February 2, 1804 AD they brought her to Mass at Our Lady of Montenero above the town. In that church a young Englishman spoke scornfully of the Real Presence at the Elevation.

Home in New York, her relatives made their support conditional on her staying an Episcopalian, and then deserted her. She made her profession of faith at St. Peter's in Barclay Street on March 14, 1805 AD. She made her first Communion there eleven days later, on the feast of the Annunciation.

Father William Valentine Dubourg offered her a small school for the education of girls at Baltimore. She left New York with her children and landed there on June 16, 1808 AD, the feast of Corpus Christi. She pronounced her vows on March 25, 1809 AD, and from that time was called Mother Seton.

A benefactor, Samuel Cooper, gave a plot of land at Emmitsburg, fifty miles from Baltimore. The sisters went down into the valley of St. Joseph on July 31, 1809 AD. Six months later Mother Seton opened the school in a new wooden building painted white.

Her sister-in-law Harriet Seton died before Christmas 1809 AD and was buried under an oak in the wood. Cecilia Seton, who at fifteen had left her family to follow her into the Church, died on April 29, 1810 AD. Her eldest daughter Anna Maria made her vows on her deathbed and died on March 12, 1812 AD, at sixteen.

Twenty sisters were told they need not accept the Rule of St. Vincent de Paul, and all but one embraced it. Archbishop John Carroll confirmed the rule on January 17, 1812 AD, and the sisters then elected her superior. Her youngest daughter Rebecca died in her arms on November 2, 1816 AD, after nine weeks nursed night and day.

From an attack of illness in 1818 AD she never entirely recovered. Archbishop Ambrose Marechal visited the valley that September and set down in his diary that she was in consumption. An abscess on the lungs confined her to her room for four months from the autumn of 1820 AD.

Father Simon Gabriel Bruté gave her Viaticum on December 30, 1820 AD. At midday on January 2, 1821 AD the sisters were called to her bedside for Extreme Unction. She died towards two in the morning on January 4, 1821 AD, in her forty-seventh year.

Archbishop James Gibbons of Baltimore urged in 1880 AD that steps be taken toward her canonization. The results of the Baltimore inquiries were placed in the postulator's hands at Rome on June 7, 1911 AD.

Pope John XXIII beatified her in St. Peter's Basilica on March 17, 1963 AD. Pope Paul VI canonized her in the same basilica on September 14, 1975 AD. The Pope set her deathbed words of January 2, 1821 AD before her sisters as a heavenly testament.