Elizabeth Ann Barley Seton
Elizabeth Ann Barley Seton was born in New York City in 1774. Her life and acts of mercy reach down 200 years later to speak to us today about our poor and needy mothers and children, charity and true liberation through education. her life, however, mostly speaks of social services being a matter of churches and socially active groups, not governmental entities controlling policy and procedures. She was an advocate for the education of woman of all faiths and is credited for starting the first American parochial free school. She also was recognized for creating several orders of sisters that grew out of her original band, the American Sisters of Charity, which later became the Daughters of Charity. At the time of her death in 1821, at the age of 47, her sisters were in twenty communities across the eastern coast of the United States, establishing orphanages, hospitals and schools. Soon after her death, the Sisters of Charity merged with the Daughters of Charity from France, which was founded by St. Vincent De Paul and Louise de Marillac in the twelfth century. They adopted their rules, long peasant dress and winged headpiece cornet that the Daughter's of Charity wore which have been easily identified ever since.
It was just after the Civil War in the mid 1860's that the first Daughter of Charity came to Chicago. Sister Wallburga Gehring and her fellow sisters had nursed soldiers of the North and South on the bloody battlefields of Gettysburg. Mow they turned their attention to the needs of the big cities to the west. Sister Wallburga Gehring and her small group founded St. Joseph's Hospital in Chicago.
Sister Wallburga Gehring remained in Chicago as supervisor of St. Joseph's Hospital, witnessing the growth of the city with 50,000 immigrants pouring into Chicago each year. Epidemics of smallpox and cholera raged through the city, affecting the poor. By the prompting of Sister Wallburga Gehring, the Archdiocese of Chicago requested a number of sisters to come from Emmittsburg and open a hospital, especially for the foundlings and destitute mothers. They would name it St. Vincent's Infant Asylum. The Sisters of the Daughters of Charity opened p the first St. Vincent's Asylum in 1881. A small building was rented at 1100 N. Orleans, which housed 140 babies. By the end of 1881, babies were being left on the doorstep or brought in by the police. Tearfully desperate parents were at the door daily, pleading for care and help for their children. Because the demand was so great, the sisters moved to a larger building at Orleans and Superior.
