Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton is the Patron Saint of teachers. She was the first native-born American to be canonized by the Catholic Church.

She grew up with New York society and wealth. At the age of nineteen she married a wealthy businessman, William Magee Seton. They had five children. William passed away in 1803, shortly after becoming bankrupt. She converted to Catholicism in 1805. One of her nephews, James Roosevelt Bayley, would later become Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Elizabeth Seton helped found the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children, New York City’s first private charity organization. In 1808, Seton established Saint Joseph’s Academy and Free School, a school dedicated to the education of Catholic girls, in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

She founded the first religious community of apostolic women of the United States, the Sisters of Charity, in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.