Elizabeth Ann Seton was an Episcopalian and a wealthy socialite in New York. She married the scion of a wealthy shipping family, and they started a family. Life was wonderful. But tragedy struck: her father in law and her husband died, and the family shipping business failed. At 29 she was a widow with five children and no means of support. While seeking solace she became Catholic after being struck by the example of the Filicchi brothers, who had been business associates of her husband. Her conversion cost her her friends and brought about hardship. She moved to Baltimore to work with Father William Louis Dubourg and Bishop John Carroll to establish a school for girls. Eventually she took religious vows and became the first mother superior of the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph. The new order moved to Emmitsburg, Maryland where they built a home and a school near Mount St. Mary's. The parochial school system in the United States traces its roots to her pioneering work. She died at just 46 years old, and became the first American-born person to be canonized in 1975.

Mother Catherine Spalding spent 45 years leading and building the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in Louisville and central Kentucky. Born in Maryland in 1793, her family moved to the Bardstown, Kentucky area when she was very young. She became an orphan at an early age, and lived with relatives until joining the fledgling order in 1813. She was elected the first Mother Superior that year, when she was 19 years old. She died in 1858, after her order had grown significantly, and was responsible for dozens of schools, orphanages, infirmaries, and homes for the homeless and destitute. In the 21st century she was named one of the 16 most influential persons in the history of Louisville and Jefferson County — the only woman on the list — and a statue of her was unveiled in 2015. It stands outside the Cathedral of the Assumption, and it is the only statue of a woman erected in a public place in Kentucky.

In 1790 four Carmelite nuns — three native Marylanders and a woman originally from England — came from Hoogstraeten in what is not Belgium to establish a Carmelite monastery in Port Tobacco, Maryland. The native Marylanders were members of the Matthews family, one of the earliest and most prominent Catholic families in Maryland. This was the first women’s religious community established within the United States of America. They were aided by members of the Neale family — another prominent early Catholic family in Maryland. One of those Neales, Charles Neale, had been the chaplain of the Carmel in Hoogstraeten, and his family was happy to make a plot of land available on which the Carmelites could build their new monastery. The Carmel flourished initially, but eventually the sisters were compelled to move to a Carmel in Baltimore. The original Carmel fell into disrepair until local residents kicked in to maintain the buildings and the grounds in the hope that the Carmelites might return. They finally did.