A convert to Roman Catholicism, Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton was foundress of the American Sisters of Charity, which was the first sisterhood native to the United States. She was the first person born in the United States to become a canonized saint on September 14, 1975.
During her lifetime she was a wife, mother, widow, sole parent, foundress, educator, social minister, and spiritual leader. Elizabeth Bayley Seton, of British and French ancestry, was born into a prominent Anglican family on August 28, 1774 in New York City and was the second daughter of Dr. Richard Bayley (1744-1801) and Catherine Charlton (d.1777). She died in Emmitsburg, Maryland on January 4, 1821.
The Bayley and Charlton families were among the earliest colonial settlers of the New York area. Elizabeth's paternal grandparents were William Bayley (c.1708-c.1758) and Susannah LeConte (LeCompte, b.1727), distinguished French Huguenots of New Rochelle. Her maternal grandparents, Mary Bayeux and Dr. Richard Charlton (d.1777), lived on Staten Island, where Dr. Charlton, was pastor at Saint Andrew's Episcopal Church.
After the death of his first wife, Dr. Bayley married (1778) Charlotte Amelia Barclay (c.1759-1805), of the Jacobus James Roosevelt lineage of New York. However, the marriage ended in separation as a result of marital conflict. The couple had seven children, three daughters and four sons. Among them was Guy Carleton Bayley (1786-1859), whose son, James Roosevelt Bayley (1814-1877), converted to Roman Catholicism and became the first bishop of Newark (1853-1872) and eighth archbishop of Baltimore (1872-1877).
Elizabeth and her sister were rejected by their stepmother. On account of her father's travel abroad for medical studies, the girls lived temporarily in New Rochelle, New York, with their paternal uncle, William Bayley (1745-1811), and his wife, Sarah Pell Bayley. When her stepmother and father separated, Elizabeth experienced a period of darkness. She reflected about this period of depression in later years in her journal entitled Dear Remembrances and expressed her relief at not taking the drug laudanum, a opium derivative: "This wretched reasoning-laudanum-the praise and thanks of excessive joy not to have done the 'horrid deed'- thoughts and promise of eternal gratitude." Elizabeth had a natural bent toward contemplation; she loved nature, poetry, and music, especially the piano. She was given to introspection and frequently made entries in her journal expressing her sentiments, religious aspirations, and favorite passages from her reading.
Elizabeth wed William Magee Seton (1768-1803), a son of William Seton, Sr., (1746-1798) and Rebecca Curson Seton (c.1746-c.1775), January 25, 1794, in the Manhattan home of Mary Bayley Post. Samuel Provoost (1742-1815), the first Episcopal bishop of New York, witnessed the wedding vows of the couple.
