Elizabeth Ann Seton
first native born American to be cannonized
biography
Elizabeth Ann Bayley was born on August 28th,1774 in New York city. Elizabeth was a kind, charming young lady. She was attached to her father for most of her life because her mother died when she was three years old.
After that she married William Seton and she became Elizabeth Ann Seton. After she married she had two kids. After a while Elizabeth became worried about Williams health. William died of tuberculosis. two and a half years they became bankrupt. Elizabeth tried all her plans to get her family back on track but all of them failed.
She eventually opened up a boarding school for school boys. The president of St. Mary’s college in Baltimore asked if she wanted to be a teacher. She accepted and moved to Baltimore. After that she wanted to do something amazing in in life. So she opened the American foundation of the sisters of charity. The sisters of charity conducted schools, orphanages. (etc.)
Holy life
After Elizabeth Ann Seton married, she started a carrier of public charity. She started a society of women known as The Widow’s Society. It was a society to provide money to the poor widowed women of New York City. Even though she founded the Widow’s society, she herself was not widowed. But her husband was suffering from Tuberculosis
. Throughout their whole marriage her husband, William, never got better.
During 1803, they decided to travel to Italy to boost William’s health. Sadly, when they were in Pisa, William died. After, the widowed Ms. Seton traveled back to America with her daughter. After she got back she opened a school. This school was unsuccessful. So Ms. Seton looked for work elsewhere. After much praying, Elizabeth accepted an invitation to open a school in Baltimore for only girls. This marked the start of the Catholic parochial school system in the United States.
A parochial school is a school supported by a religious body. In the US, schools have many religious groups such as Lutherans, Seventh—Day Adventists, Orthodox Jews, Evangelists, and Muslims. The majority of the schools are Roman Catholic parishes. The reason she became a saint, is because she founded the Sisters of Charity, and she ran an orphanage.
extra facts
She was married on 25 Jan., 1794, in St. Paul's Church, New York, to William Magee Seton, of that city, by Bishop Prevoost. To support her children, she opened a school in Baltimore. From the beginning, her group followed the lines of a religious community, which was officially founded in 1809. Through most of their married life, William Seton suffered from tuberculosis. In 1803, after suffering severe business losses, including bankruptcy, William’s health deteriorated rapidly.
Much later, in a response to a request from President Abraham Lincoln, more than 200 Daughters of Charity served on battlefields and in military hospitals during the Civil War. That June, she and her followers donned a simple black religious habit and set out for Emmetsburg, Maryland. Elizabeth Ann Bayley (St. Seton) was the daughter of a prominent physician. Elizabeth established an organization in New York City called the Widows' Society.
She and other members daily visited the poor in their homes to nurse and comfort them.