The Short Lives of Three of Mother Seton's Children:
Anna-Maria, Richard, and Rebecca

Anna Maria, William, Richard Bayley, Catherine Josephine, Rebecca, like every mother Elizabeth Seton could invoke the litany of her children.  Annina, Will, Dick, Kit and Bec were here joy and constant concern.  She loved to care for them, to teach them and to read to them.  Their christenings were great events in the family.  As they grew she taught them about God and his love.
   Eternity!  One of Mother Seton's favorite words, which expressed her longing for God also, characterized the short lives of three of her children.  Anna Maria, the oldest, and Rebecca, the youngest, both died before their 18th birthdays.  Richard lived to be nearly 25.  Anna Maria, William, and Richard were born in Elizabeth and William's first home at 27 Wall Street.  It was the proud father who announced Annina's arrival on May 3, 1795 to Elizabeth's friend Julia Scott in Philadelphia.  She was named after her grandmother Anna-Maria Curson Seton.  In a letter to Eliza Sadler in Paris in February 1796 when Anna Maria was two, Elizabeth described her daughter as having eyes, "much near black than any other color, which with a very small nose and mouth, dimpled cheek and chin, rosy face and never-ceasing

animation, form and object rather too interesting for my pen... in short, she is her mother's own daughter, and you may be sure her father's pride."  On another occasion she told her Eliza, Anna "possesses from her mother a most ungovernable temper."  Perhaps this was Mrs. Seton's first encounter with what is commonly called the "terrible twos." By the time of her note to Eliza Sadler, Anna Maria had ceased to be the baby of the family.  William arrived on November 25, 1796.  Elizabeth wrote to her husband's grandmother in England that "never were there two sweeter children."
   Richard who was born July 20, 1798 nearly cost his mother her life.  William Seton's father died in June.  His business was near bankruptcy.  Worn down by her responsibilities to her husband's younger brothers and sisters and the strain of helping William put his father's affairs in order, Elizabeth was exhausted.  William had gone to Philadelphia on business.  He expected to be home in time for the new baby's birth, especially as he was worried that Elizabeth was not well.  She had a difficult labor, and it was her father who saved Elizabeth and the baby.  Dr. Bayley blew breath in his namesake's lung's to revive him after his birth.  

By August, Mrs. Seton was telling Julia Scott that her aches and pains are over and she has a lovely boy, "additionally dear to me for bearing the name of Richard Bayley which softened by Seton and the end... are the promise of much future hope and comfort."  That fall the Setons settled in the family home on Stone Street.  There Elizabeth and her sister-in-law Rebecca managed a household of eighteen.  In the summer of 1800 Elizabeth and the children went to Staten Island to be with her father.  Catherine was born there on June 28.  Two days later  William informed Julia Scott, "I have the pleasure to inform you that on Saturday last at dawn of day your little friend presented us with another daughter, if possible more lovely than the first... I left her and her mother yesterday at the Health Establishment... Elizabeth was never better."
   The following summer she loved to sit on a rock with Kate, then the baby, in her lap while she watched Annina and William playing with seashells on the sand.  The joy of Catherine's birth was tempered with the death of Dr. Bayley in August 1801.  He contracted typhoid from the immigrants whom he cared for, and died within a week.  Mary Post came to be with Elizabeth and helped
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