Elizabeth Ann Seton
Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton (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.
Patron saint of Catholic schools; widows; Shreveport, Louisiana; the State of Maryland; Catholic converts
In the Martyrology
- January 4 Saint Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, widow, founder of the Sisters of Charity