After a few years of searching for a place to serve in the Church and to provide for her family, Elizabeth was encouraged to move to Baltimore, Maryland, to start a school. With two other young women, she started the first Catholic school in the United States. On March 25, 1809, she took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and began to be called Mother Seton.
Elizabeth and the two other young women attracted others to their work and began a Sisterhood (Sisters of Charity in the U.S.) based on the Rule of St. Vincent de Paul for the Daughters of Charity in France. By 1818, they still maintained the original school, but had added another school and two orphanages to their work.
Elizabeth suffered with illness during the last three years of her life and passed away in 1821 in Maryland.
Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton is credited with starting the parochial system in the United States and today six orders of sisters trace their roots to her work. She did this while raising her five children. Quite an accomplishment!!!
Some of her notable close relatives include:
1. The Most Reverend Robert Seton, Archbishop of Heliopolis, a grandson
2. Mother Catherine Seton, died at the age of 90 as Mother Catherine of the Sisters of Mercy, New York, a daughter
3. The Most Reverend James Roosevelt Bayley, Archbishop of Baltimore, a half-nephew who also converted
Miracles Attributed to Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton
from A Pocket Full of Miracles published by The Catholic Digest
"Elizabeth Seton was always, first of all, a mother - to her children and her Sisters - and so it isn't surprising that mothers in need have sought her intercession. It was to Mother Seton that the mother of four-year-old Anne O'Neil prayed in 1952. Anne lay dying in a Baltimore hospital from acute lymphatic leukemia, a disease which at that time was without exception fatal to its young victims. Blood transfusions, "miracle" drugs, every treatment available had been tried and had failed. Doctors gave the parents no hope, and when Anne contracted a severe case of chicken pox as well, the end seemed very close. At that point Sister of Charity Mary Alice Fowler got her Order and the children in the Order's schools to join Mrs. O'Neill in a novena to Mother Seton, asking for her intercession on Anne's behalf. Eighteen days later Anne was discharged from the hospital, her
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