The National Archives and Records Administration is the repository of all official documents of the United States government. With Mother Seton and her family’s long history in the United States, particularly in the United States Navy, the Seton family appears in many different places in our nation’s official government repository.
First, it is also worth noting that the ancestral Seton family have their own collection in the National Records of Scotland from Glorious Revolution through 1785.
The most obvious place that the family is represented is in the census records, with Elizabeth Ann and William Magee Seton appearing in the earliest censuses in New York City, and then Mother Seton appearing in Emmitsburg in 1810 and 1820. The census records provide massive volumes of information related to demographics and are used most immediately for congressional apportionment and for funding for public services.
Listing for Mother Seton and the community in the 1810 census under “E. Seton”
William Seton III, one of Mother Seton’s surviving sons, is among the most represented due to his career in the Navy. Military records, for both genealogists and veterans, are among the most used and requested materials in the National Archives. Within the collection “Naval Records Collection of the Office of Naval Records and Library,” there is a series called “Letters Received from Commissioned Officers Below the Rank of Commander and from Warrant.” This series contains various letters documenting official correspondence of enlisted sailors and their interaction with superior officers. Among these are 19 letters including requests for leave, administrative documents, and reports from William Seton reporting to his commanding officers. They span from his time on the Macedonian during its tour of the Pacific (and whose log is in the possession of the Daughters’ Archive). Many others request shore leave or ask for extensions of leave.
William’s sister Catherine makes an appearance in one of his requests. On October 9, 1828, William requested leave to travel in Europe due do “the continued ill health of my sister, to whom the Phisicians [sic] have recommended that course, as the only hope of renovating her constitution.” This occurred during Catherine’s “World Traveler” era, when she was making extended stays in Europe, before eventually becoming a religious Sister of Mercy. His letters stretch through his return to Norfolk in 1833 and return to civilian life.
William Seton to the Secretary of the Navy, October 9, 1828: “Sir[,] I had the honor a few days past, to apply to you for permission to travel in Europe. I beg leave to state that my reason for doing so was the continued ill health of my sister, to whom the Phisicians [sic] have recommended that course, as the only hope of renovating her constitution”
William Seton Maitland, nephew of Elizabeth and William Magee, also appears in the military records during the Seminole Wars in Florida.
In the more modern day, and as a preview of things to come, the National Archives is also in possession of the official proclamations from the U.S. government about Mother Seton’s canonization. Under Press Secretary William Baroody’s files, held at the Gerald Ford Presidential Library, is the official proclamation of Elizabeth Ann Seton Day, alongside a signed thank you letter from Sister Mary John Lindner for the community’s replica copy, signed by President Ford. This replica will be on display next year (2025) for our exhibit “One of Us” at the Seton Shrine, celebrating the 50th anniversary of this event!
As a reminder of the vast scale of the National Archives, and the complexity of archival research, these records are among those that are digitized and available remotely to researchers. This totals a mere 2% of the National Archives’ holdings, and there may well be other materials that one day are accessible without a trip to your nearest NARA branch. William Seton IV, Mother Seton’s grandson, appears in Civil War veterans records, but his company, the New York 16th Artillery, have not been digitized yet.
As an example of records which need to be visited in-person, these scans were lent to us by our friend and colleague Dr. Catherine O’Donnell and come from the National Archives branch in Kansas City, where Record Group 21 “Records of District Courts of the United States” reside. Less than 0.5% of these records are scanned and online as of this time, but among them are early records of the United States bankruptcy court. It is in these documents that the Setons’ life in New York City began to unravel, as the Seton-Maitland shipping company ran out of money, and the Setons were forced to sell their assets.
Front cover of 1800 bankruptcy filing
First page of Seton Family’s assets during bankruptcy case
Archivists at NARA are working hard to make more materials available, both in-person and remotely. A way that you can help is to make more materials more searchable. Their Citizen Archivist program allows anyone with an Internet connection to apply metadata and transcription to documents that have been scanned and made available. These tags help make more materials searchable, so that that needle in haystack – that one stray name in a vast file – can turn up with a few strokes of a keyboard.
The records in the National Archives are the property of the American people. Make use of your records, and help others make use of them too!
Father John Dubois was among the most influential people in the early days of Mother Seton’s community. Although he was not the first priest-Superior, he worked the most closely with Mother Seton in establishing the rules and norms of the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph’s.
Portrait of Dubois
Father Dubois was the Superior from 1811 to 1826, in addition to his role as the founder, in 1809, of Mount St. Mary’s University. In 1826, he was appointed as Bishop of New York and left his role in Emmitsburg. On May 16, 1842, Father Dubois made one final trip to Emmitsburg. He stayed for a few weeks, departing in June.
The accounts of his visit show him quite frail, aged 78. Sister Ann Aloysia Reed was tasked with assisting him during his visit, and he often needed guidance to navigate the terrain. When he was invited to give Mass to the Sisters, Mother Mary Xavier Clark worried about his health, and asked Sisters to forgo Communion and attend a second Mass later for fear of overtaxing him. Nonetheless, he would wake early every day at the first bell after sleeping in a bed set up in Mother Seton’s old room.
Nonetheless, for the Sisters who had been around during his tenure, it was a joyous occasion, and for the younger Sisters to meet someone about whom they had heard so many stories. Father Dubois had provided the Sisters their first home in Emmitsburg, in a cabin on the property of Mount St. Mary’s. He had been the most influential figure in crafting the Rule of St. Vincent for the particular situation of an American Sisters’ community, and he had helped establish a long-lasting administration of St. Joseph’s Academy. He had provided Mother Seton with her last rites.
Father Dubois did not live long after his visit, departing this world in December of 1842, a few meager months after his visit. Shortly after his visit, he wrote one final letter to the Community, thanking them for their hospitality and congratulating Mother Mary Xavier on her re-election as Superioress.
In April 2022, the Archivist for another community of Sisters reached out to a number of other Archivists from other religious communities, asking about a Sister Loretto O’Reilly who served in the Civil War. The Daughters were able to claim her, so we responded.
The Archivist went on to say that she had a set of letters written from Sister Loretto to her uncle in their collection and would like to repatriate the letters back to their home collection. We happily agreed to accept the letters when she next travelled through the area next.
Two and a half years later, the transfer finally happened.
Prior to the transfer, the Archives had some information about Sister Loretto. We knew she was born Mary Ann O’Reilly. She immigrated from Ireland in 1853 and that her parents were farmers. We know she joined the Community in 1855 and served in a few schools and infant homes prior to 1861. When the Civil War began, she served as a nurse in Cliffburne and Lincoln Hospitals in Washington, D.C., where she acquired the moniker “Guardian Angel of the Ambulance.” She became the second administrator of Providence Hospital in Washington in 1865, a position that stemmed from her work at the D.C. hospitals, where she was vital in establishing the Hospital in the post-war years. She died at age 37 in 1869 of an early-onset heart condition.
There are two known photos of Sister Loretto.
As best as we can conclude, the letters were used by a Sister of St. Joseph as a teaching tool, coming from their Wichita chapter. They are marked as “Found in Sister Margaret Mary Sheehan’s Educational folder.” In total, there are six complete letters from Sister Loretto to her uncle, one incomplete letter between the same, and one additional incomplete letter from her uncle to a woman named Mary.
Prior to these letters, we did not believe any of her own personal accounts still existed. The information about her time in the War came from the Civil War Annals, and, while these are massively valuable resources, they suffer from two drawbacks. First, they were written as recollections in 1866, not as accounts written in the moment. And second, they often discussed locations in general in a few pages, not the works of individuals. At Cliffburne Hospital, accounts describe a night of 64 men arriving, with “only eight [who] had all their limbs.” In spite of the challenges, doctors and nurses tried very hard to care for their patients’ physical and spiritual conditions, among the challenges being an outbreak of smallpox that required quarantining of some soldiers. Alongside the Sisters’ works, there was also evidence of collaboration with the government, with accounts of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln herself bringing donations of supplies to soldiers who had been in residence for an extended period of time!
The letters go into much more extensive detail about life and work at the Hospitals. On August 10, 1862, Sister notes that there are 15 Sisters and 13 doctors working at Cliffburne, with attendants to do “the cleaning, etc.” She also described the political state of the Hospital: “When we first came here there were nearly two hundred Confederate prisioners [sic] confined here. Many of them badly wounded but as they got better they were taken to the old Capitol and confined there until they were exchanged.” They received care, and she notes with some surprise that the “Confederates got more visitors than the Union soldiers.”
Her November 28th, 1862 letter attests to a few conversions among the soldiers, but shows her anguish at what she considers many soldier’s “indifference” to their spiritual lives. She goes into detail about the Cliffburne itself, describing it as a converted barracks for the cavalry, so many of the wards are actually horse stables: “It is a very nice place for a summer Hospital, but it is inconvient [sic] for winter.” She says that the Hospital fit 2,000, that their patient population had topped off at about 1,400, but was down to 600 by November. “I think it is about one mile square or neally [sic] so. There are seven long wooden wards or Barracks each containing seventy-five beds and forty-two tents each contanes [sic] eighteen beds, scattered about a large space besides there are a number of other buildings such as store houses, kitchens mess rooms etc.”
By April 26, 1863, Sister Loretto had relocated to Lincoln, the largest field hospital in Washington: “It is composed of twenty large wards or Barracks build in the form of a V, ten each side and one large one in the center which is used as head quarters the Doctors rooms, offices, dispensary, etc. Each Ward holds from sixty to seventy beds, they are high and well ventilated.” Her personal thoughts: “I like the Wards and the hospital generally but the situation is miserable. It is a swampy hollow place and a perfect mud hole.” They had begun receiving patients shortly before Christmas 1862 from the Battle of Fredericksburg. The Battle was one of the most lopsided victories for the Confederacy of the War, and Sister calls it “not a Battle but a slaughter [emphasis hers].” By May 1, 1863, many of the soldiers from this battle are still at the Hospital, and Sister notes that “I saw them realize what War is or at least see the fruits of it.”
By July 3, 1863, there had been even more major battles: “Since my last letter to you we received a number of sick and wounded. The wounded were all from a cavalry fight a short distance from here [likely the Battle of Brandy Station on June 9, 1863]. They were brought to the hospital the day after the battle. They are not making preparations for a great many from the battles now going on [possibly Gettysburg]. Nearly all the prisoners have been exchanged. We have only ten or twelve here now. Only a few of them died.” She expresses the hope for the end of the War: “I am sure you have heard of the great excitement in this quarter for weeks past. I wish every day more and more that this war ended. It is dreadful to think of the number of poor souls plunged daily into eternity and the misery brought into thousands of homes. Tho so long accustomed to witness their sufferings I can not get used to it.” Finally, her time with the common soldiers revealed to her the longstanding and common divide across time, generations, and Wars between the common enlistees and draftees and their commanding officers, particularly after the long string of losses the United States suffered early in the early years of the War: “The poor men too, are so discouraged at (as they say themselves) getting whipped all the time and blame their officers very much with very few exceptions they all seem tired and disgusted with the war.”
In the last letter of hers in the collection, from November 1, 1864, an incomplete letter, she comments on the soldiers’ and their political talk in the wards, as they expect more wounded from the battlefields in Virginia, and her note that many of the soldiers she encounters tend to be supporting the election of the former general Scott McClellen over President Lincoln in the upcoming election.
As fascinating as her accounts of the Hospital and wartime life are, the letters help flesh out her life in far more detail than we have ever had before. Based on these, we are able to draw conclusions about her early life and her family life far more than we ever have before. She makes reference to writing to her parents, entirely separately from her uncle and apparently back in Ireland: “I was truly sorry to hear such accounts of our poor Ireland and it makes me still more anxious to hear from my parents.” When Sister Loretto immigrated to the United States in 1853, Ireland was still in the worst days of the Great Famine, and she brings up two names of siblings as well, Mage and Lizzy. By July 3, 1863, they have relocated to Dublin, despite listing her father’s occupation on her community entry papers as “Farmer.” Seemingly, the city offered better opportunities than continuing to farm.
The final letter in the collection was written by her uncle in 1870, a year after Sister Loretto’s death, postmarked from Atchison, Kansas. Regarding her early life, he writes that “Since she left Saint Louis we kept up a regular correspondence. Her letters were always interesting to me and I miss her on that account as well as for their feelings. Though her education was not expensive her letters show that she made good use of the opportunities that she got to learn.” It seems likely that her uncle was her sponsor when she emigrated, and she possibly lived with him, considering the separation of her uncle and the rest of her family across the sea. She also received some level of schooling, possibly from one of the many Daughters of Charity institutions in St. Louis at the time.
It is even more impressive what he wrote about the final stages of Sister Loretto’s life, events which otherwise have not made it into the historical record and shows just how much the nursing prowess of the Daughters was respected in Washington. “A Member of Congress invited her to command their Carriages when she wished to take recreation, but she never used that privilege. The President even paid her the honour of a visit. Thadeus Stephens” – the famous Congressman and advocate of a Radical Reconstruction following the Civil War – “a member of Congress who successfully contended for a grant of money to assist in building Providence Hospital was at the point of death. Mary Ann [Sister Loretto] with several Sisters visited their dying friend and with the consent of those present she Baptized the dying Statesman.
Thaddeus Stevens, courtesy Library of Congress
These letters are not just a massively valuable addition to the Daughters’ Civil War collection, they illustrate a remarkable life that, while far shorter than it should have been, made an impact on hundreds or even thousands. It is a tribute to the nurses, the combat doctors, the Irish diaspora, and, certainly, the Daughters of Charity.
The letters are available for researchers alongside the rest of the Civil War collection.
docarchivesblog.org 