Exactly one year ago, Omnes published a brief profile of the first American-born saint, Elisabeth Ann Setonwhich narrated the vicissitudes of the prosperous Charlton family, into which Elisabeth was born in 1774. She soon learned that material goods do not fill the heart.
That Episcopalian household suffered a severe blow in 1777: the mother died during childbirth, followed shortly thereafter by the death of one of the youngest girls in the family. The girl's father remarried, but the marriage broke up. The father left for England and the stepmother refused to take Elizabeth in. Together with her sister, the young girl went to live with her uncle and during that time she kept a diary of her spiritual concerns.
At the age of nineteen she married and had five children, but her husband went bankrupt and they decided to travel to Italy, where he died. Widowed before the age of thirty and with five children, Elisabeth She sought help from her husband and wife's partner, and came to Catholicism. Returning to New York she asked for Baptism, and soon founded the community of the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, for the education of poor girls, and was known as Mother Seton. She died in 1821.
