New York. They had five children. Seton was in the import-export business. In 1803 Mr. Seton's health deteriorated and, anticipating a better climate, he, Elizabeth, and their oldest daughter Anna Maria sailed for Leghorn, Italy, leaving the other children in care of Seton's sister, Rebecca. William Seton succumbed to tuberculosis on December 27, 1803. Elizabeth and Anna Maria were accommodated by the families of her late husband's Italian business partners, the Filicchis. While staying with them, she was introduced to Roman Catholicism. Some months later she sailed for home, arriving on June 3, 1804. In March 1805, Elizabeth Bayley Seton was received into the Catholic Church by Father Matthew O'Brien in St. Peter's Church, Barclay Street, New York. For a time she attempted to support herself by opening a school for boys, but the widely circulated report that this was a proselytizing scheme forced the school to close. Her sons had been sent by the Filicchis to Georgetown College. She hoped to find a refuge in some convent in Canada, where her teaching would support her three daughters. Reverend Louis William Dubourg, S.S., met Elizabeth Bayley Seton about 1806 in New York and invited her to Baltimore to establish a small boarding school for girls near the Sulpician institution, Saint Mary’s College & Seminary. After a long delay, she and her daughters reached Baltimore in 1808, and she opened a school next to the chapel of St. Mary's Seminary. A school for poor children was subsequently opened in nearby Emmitsburg. Elizabeth's sisters-in-law Cecilia and Harriet Seton joined her. As a preliminary to the formation of a new community, Mrs. Seton took vows privately before Archbishop Carroll and her daughter Anna. In 1810 Bishop Flaget was commissioned by the community to obtain from France the rules of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. The rule, with some modifications, was approved by Archbishop Carroll in January 1812, and adopted. Mrs. Seton was elected superior. Others joined the community and on July 19, 1813, Mother Seton and eighteen sisters made their vows. Mother Seton died at Emmitsburg, Maryland, on January 4, 1821. Expansion In 1814 the sisters were given charge of an orphan asylum in Philadelphia; in 1817 they were sent to New York. In the 1840s the Emmitsburg motherhouse made plans to become affiliated with the French community. Archbishop Hughes of New York suggested that the New York community