St. Elizabeth Seton’s letters reveal woman passionate about relationships

The members of the Daughters of Charity, the religious community founded by St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, are hoping that Catholics will learn more about the first saint born on what is now U.S. soil this year, the 50th anniversary of her canonization.

If they do, said Daughter of Charity Betty Ann McNeil, they will find a fascinating woman who lived a varied life with periods of teenage depression, of being a wealthy New York socialite, of being an impoverished young widow with five children under the age of 8.

It was in that period of personal and financial difficulty that she encountered Catholicism in Italy and developed a deep devotion to the Eucharist before becoming Catholic and starting the Daughters of Charity in Maryland, bringing the Vincentian charism to the United States before the first Vincentian priests and brothers arrived here.

Over the years, she wrote many letters and kept a variety of journals and “commonplace books,” papers that have made their way to her religious community’s archives. While those have been published, Sister Betty Ann said, this year saw the release of digitized images of those papers, so that scholars, students and others can see her handwritten missives and notes.

“It’s so different from reading a typescript or reading a book of someone’s writings,” Sister Betty Ann said. “The size of the letters, how dark they are — she did not have a bold font. She created a bold font. … One can see when she runs out of ink. The ink is brown, the paper is a light beige.”

St. Elizabeth Seton’s handwriting was consistent throughout her life, though it grew a but larger as she aged, Sister Betty Ann said.

The digitized papers are available and searchable on the DePaul Digital Commons, which are open to the public.

They include two journals or copybooks from her youth, along with business correspondence and more than a thousand letters written to family and friends.

“She lived her faith and acted out of her Gospel values,” said Sister Betty Ann, who was present at the Vatican for St. Elizabeth Seton’s canonization. “She became a spiritual leader and mentor as a schoolmistress. There are so many roles that she lived during her lifetime that are relevant to contemporary men and women in the United States and elsewhere.”

St. Elizabeth Seton’s first vocation was as a wife and mother, Sister Betty Ann said, but when her husband’s business failed and his health deteriorated, she and their oldest daughter accompanied him to Italy in 1803 in hopes that warmer climate would benefit him.

He died a month after they arrived, leaving his widow and daughter stranded in Italy, living on the support of a family with whom he had once done business. That family offered her a view of the Catholic faith, and she returned to New York the following year with “a Catholic heart,” Sister Betty Ann said.

That experience was formative. After returning to New York, she became Catholic and tried to support her family by teaching, but the first school she taught at went bankrupt. She moved to Maryland at the invitation of the Sulpician Fathers to start a women’s religious institute and a school in 1808.

“She had experienced welcome and hospitality in a foreign country,” Sister Betty Ann said. “She extended that welcome to children who needed an education, especially girls.”

The writings show St. Elizabeth Seton’s reliance on St. Vincent de Paul and St. Louise de Marillac, who co-founded the Daughters of Charity in France with St. Vincent de Paul, as well St. Teresa of Avila.

“She thought the concept of serving God in the person of the poor and serving God’s will were very important,” Sister Betty Ann said. “She thought a vocation was a gift from God.”

There are letters to parents from children who were experiencing difficulty in school, she said, and a line in a note to friends that would be familiar to teachers now.

“She said American parents certainly aren’t open to recognizing the problems of difficulties with their children, because they think it reflects on them,” Sister Betty Ann explained.

Those who survived turbulent adolescences might relate to her writing that she is glad and relieved to have not done “the horrid deed” of suicide with laudanum when she was a teenager facing family problems, Sister Betty Ann said, and anyone in a position of leadership will appreciate her clarity and diplomacy in later letters.

“If we look at the whole, we get a sense of a woman who was passionate about maintaining relationships,” Sister Betty Ann said. “She was a communicator. She’s a woman with emotions. She could get angry. She cried. She could protest. She was one tiny, diminutive woman who spoke truth to power. She could soothe hearts and she could speak her mind.”