American nun, founder of the first community of Sisters of Charity in the United States; born in New York City on the 28th of August 1774. In 1794 she married William Seton, of New York, and after his death joined the Roman Catholic Church (March 14, 1805). She opened a school in New York in 1805, but, not meeting with success, gave it up in 1808. In the following year she with her sisters-in-law, Harriet and Cecilia Seton, took the veil, and with $8,000 given by a recent convert to Catholicism, bought a farm in Emmettsburg, MD, and there founded the first community of the order of Sisters of Charity in the United States, together with a school for girls under its supervision, Mrs. Seton becoming the Mother Superior. In 1811 the rules and constitution of St. Vincent de Paul were adopted and the community became a regular Roman Catholic order. In 1814 a colony of sisters was sent to Philadelphia to take charge of the orphan asylum, and in 1817 of that in New York. Mother Seton wrote her Memoirs in 1817. She died in Emmettsburg, MD, on the 4th of January 1821.
