Born August 28, 1774 to Richard Bayley, a famous Colonial physician who became New York City's first Health Officer, and Catherine Charlton, the daughter of an Episcopalian minister. Her mother died when she was three, and her father remarried a year later.
Elizabeth was an affectionate and vivacious child. She and her sister, Mary, spent much of their childhood with their uncle, William Bayley, at New Rochelle. During this time, she began to read the Bible, religious poetry of John Milton and James Thomson, and the pious essays of Hugh Blair. She "frequented the theatre with relish..." and displayed an exception love for babies and children that brought her to devote her life to them. She delighted in teaching her half brothers and half sisters their prayers, and sang hymns to rock them to sleep.
Elizabeth married William Magee Seton at the age of 19. Seton, a handsome man of high good humor and charm, and Elizabeth were very much in love, and their first year of marriage was blesssed with the birth of their first child, Anna Maria, and their own home on Wall Street.
Their second child, William, was born in 1796. The next year, Elizabeth began her career of public charity by forming the Widows' Society in New York with Mrs. Isabella Graham. The Seton's third child, Richard, was born in 1798, and fourth child, daughter Catherine, in 1800. The Setons' last child, Rebecca, was born in 1802.
Elizabeth's husband, William, died in 1803 while he and Elizabeth were on a business trip in Italy, and there Elizabeth became acquainted with the Catholic faith.
In 1809, she founded the Sisters of Charity in America and is often credited with founding the Catholic School System. Before her death in 1821, she sent seven of her sisters to Cincinnati, led by Mother Margaret George. They lived at Cedar Grove and were the original members of a new congregation: The Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati.
In 1975, Elizabeth Ann Seton became the first canonized saint born in the United States of America.