Elizabeth Ann Seton

Summary

Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton 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.