Mother Mathilda Beasley was born Mathilda Taylor in New Orleans, Louisiana in either 1832 or 1834. Her mother was enslaved, and her father was not known, though he may have been James Taylor, her mother's slave owner. She may have been baptized in the Cathedral of St. Louis in New Orleans, and she was educated as she grew. By 20 years old she was a free woman of color and had moved to Savannah, Georgia. There she worked as a seamstress and took the very risky step of educating the children of slaves. This was forbidden by George law, and it carried harsh penalties. After the Civil War she married Abraham Beasley, but when he died she donate all of her money to the Catholic Church — perhaps because her husband, though he was black, had made money in the slave trade. She went back to working as a seamstress, but she wanted to educate children and to become a religious sister. She eventually founded one of the first Catholic religious orders for Black women in the US, and it was the first in Georgia. She died in 1903 while praying before a statue of the Blessed Mother. Her funeral was packed with Catholics and Protestants alike.

Daniel Rudd was born a slave in Bardstown. His family was Catholic, as was the family who enslaved them. They all worshiped God together at St. Joseph Proto-Cathedral, the first cathedral of the Diocese of Bardstown which had become the Diocese of Louisville by the time he was born. St. Joseph was right across the street from the house where he grew up. He reflected later in life about how at St. Joseph he learned that in the sacraments of the Church, all were equal before God, regardless of race or class. He was freed after the Civil War and went to live with his brother in Ohio. He worked for civil rights for blacks beginning in the late 1860s. He founded the first newspaper published by a black man for black people. His paper eventually went national. He had the approbation of many bishops and cardinals in the USA and from abroad. Eventually he worked with Father Augustus Tolton to establish the Colored Catholic Congress, the precursor to the modern National Black Catholic Congress. Daniel Rudd died in 1933 in his childhood home in Bardstown, and he is buried in the graveyard at the Proto-Cathedral.

Ellis Island opened on January 1, 1892, and the first immigrant to be welcomed was Annie Moore, who was either a 15 or 17 year-old Catholic girl from Ireland. She and her younger brothers traveled over from Cobh, County Cork to join their parents who were already in American. Moore went on to marry a German and have a bunch of kids in New York City, contrary to some popular myths. Twelve million immigrants passed through Ellis Island during its 62 years of service, most of them from historically Catholic countries. Ellis Island was the first central immigration point set up by the federal government after nearly 100 years of immigration being controlled by the states.

Mother Benedict Duss hid from the Nazis in her French Benedictine monastery during World War II. After General Patton's Third Army liberated her abbey she pledged to return to the United States to establish a Benedictine monastery to pray for and bless her homeland. Through the assistance of two future popes — both of whom would eventually be canonized — and a number of other providential happenstances, the Abbey of Regina Laudis was finally established in Bethlehem, Connecticut. The story of the founding eventually became the basis for the acclaimed movie Come To The Stable, which was nominated for eight Oscars, including for the screenplay written by Clare Booth Luce. Regina Laudis has been the home of Mother Dolores Hart since she left a budding Hollywood acting career in the 1960s, and it was the place where the actress Patricia Neal found solace and healing after her tumultuous life.

Father Aloysius Schmitt was a Navy Chaplain assigned to the USS Oklahoma at the outset of World War II. He had just finished the 7 a.m. Mass on the Second Sunday of Advent when the first torpedoes from the surprise Japanese attack struck the ship. He aided men to escape, at the cost of his own life during the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was the first chaplain to die in World War II.

Venerable Henriette Delille overcame great opposition to establish the second religious community for black women in the United States. She was an octroon born in New Orleans in 1813. Her mother was a kept woman within the plaçage system. After Henriette learned the truth about marriage she became implacably opposed to the plaçage system, and she rejected the trajectory of her life. In her 20s she started the second religious community for black women, but it took years for the authorities to approve her religious order. Since its founding in the 1840s the community has opened the first Catholic nursing home for the elderly in the United States, as well as one of the oldest Black Catholic high schools in the USA. Henriette Delille died in 1862. Her cause for canonization opened in 1988, and she was declared venerable in 2010.

"Pope Night" was the American version of the British "Guy Fawkes Night," the annual commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot. The night of mischief and mayhem and anti-Catholic demonstrations came over with sailors and grew to include demonstrations up and down the New England coast. It was ended by George Washington, who had an affinity for Catholics — and who needed Catholic support in the war against Great Britain

In the late 1700s, Adam Livingston, who was Lutheran, moved with his family to a farm near Smithfield, Virginia. After a stranger, who turned out to be Catholic, died in his home, manifestations of a demonic infestation of their home began to disturb his family. The sound of invisible horses galloping loudly, crockery flying off shelves, a clipping sound accompanied by articles of clothing being damaged, and other disturbing occurrences. The clipping is what gave the area the name "Wizard Clip." The manifestations continued until two Catholic priests, including Father Demetrius "Prince" Gallitzin, intervened to exorcise the demons. Livingston's family became Catholic as a result. Following their conversion, a consoling heavenly voice instructed the Livingston family in the faith, led them in prayer, and inspired Livingston to do good things for others in need. When the Livingstons moved back to Pennsylvania in 1802, Adam Livingston donated 34 acres to the Catholic Church, and that land is, since 1978, the Priestfield retreat center for priests in modern day Middleway, West Virginia.