Healy family facts for kids
The Healy family was a remarkable family with both Irish and African-American roots. They are famous because the children in the first generation, born into slavery in Georgia in the 1800s, achieved amazing things.
Some of the notable family members include James, who became America's first known Black Catholic priest and bishop. Patrick was the first Black Jesuit, earned a PhD, and became a university president. Michael was the first African-American to command a federal ship. And Eliza became one of the first Black Catholic Mother Superiors.
Quick facts for kids Healy |
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|---|---|
| Current region |  America |
| Place of origin |  Ireland Africa |
| Founded | 1829 |
| Founder | Michael Morris Healy |
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The Amazing Healy Family
Family Story
Michael and Mary's Life
The Healy family's story begins with Michael Morris Healy. He was born in Ireland in 1796 and came to the United States around 1818. Michael was very lucky in a land lottery in Georgia. He bought more land and eventually owned over 1,500 acres near the Ocmulgee River.
He became a successful farmer, growing cotton. He owned many workers for his large farm. In 1829, when he was 33, he started a family with a 16-year-old girl named Mary Eliza. She was a worker on his farm.
In the Southern states at that time, children born to enslaved women were legally considered enslaved, no matter who their father was. This was due to a law called partus sequitur ventrem. Even though Michael and Mary Eliza lived as a married couple, their children were legally considered enslaved.
Michael and Mary Eliza lived together until they both passed away in 1850. They had ten children, and nine of them grew up to be adults. They had planned to move to the North with their youngest children, where laws were different.
The Healy Children's Journey
Laws in Georgia made it illegal to educate Black people, whether they were free or enslaved. These laws were put in place after a slave rebellion in 1831.
To make sure his children could get an education, Michael Healy looked for schools in the North in 1837. His oldest son, James, was born in 1830. James was sent to a Quaker school in Flushing, New York. Later, he went to another Quaker school in New Jersey.
Some of James's younger brothers also went to these Quaker schools. The boys sometimes faced criticism because their father owned enslaved people, which went against Quaker beliefs. They also faced challenges as Irish Catholics during a time when many Irish immigrants were arriving in the U.S.
Around 1844, Michael Healy met the Catholic bishop of Boston. He learned about the new College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1844, Michael sent his sons James (14), Hugh (12), Patrick (10), and Sherwood (8) to Holy Cross. All of them later graduated from the college. His fifth son, Michael, joined them a few years later in 1849.
The Healy parents wanted to sell their farm and move North with their three youngest children. But they both died unexpectedly in 1850. Their son Hugh Healy bravely returned to Georgia from New York to bring his three youngest siblings North. He risked being captured and sold because he was still legally enslaved in Georgia.
After graduating from Holy Cross, Hugh had started a hardware business in New York City. He brought his younger siblings to New York. There, they were all baptized as Catholics in the Church of St. Francis Xavier in 1851. Sadly, Hugh Healy died at age 21 after a boating accident.
Because their mother had mixed ancestry, the Healy children were of mixed European and African heritage. However, with their education and their father's wealth, the Healy children were generally accepted as "white" Irish Americans in the Northern U.S. and Canada.
Their Amazing Careers
Most of the Healy children became important leaders in the Catholic Church. They were the mixed-race children of Mary Eliza Smith and Michael Morris Healy. Michael was an Irish Catholic immigrant who became a wealthy cotton farmer in Georgia.
The children looked different from each other; some could "pass" as white more easily than others. Georgia laws prevented enslaved people from being educated. But Michael Healy was determined to give his children a better future, so he sent them North for school. This was something other wealthy farmers with mixed-race children also did. The Healy children were baptized and educated in the North, which gave them many opportunities as Irish Catholics.
Most of the sons first went to Quaker schools before moving to a Catholic school in Massachusetts. All but one son graduated from college. James, Patrick, and Sherwood Healy all studied at the Saint-Sulpice Seminary in Paris. Patrick and Sherwood even earned doctorates there. The three daughters were educated at old Catholic convent schools in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Nine of the Healy children lived to adulthood. Three sons became Catholic priests and educators. One son died young at 21. All three daughters became nuns. (One daughter later left the order, got married, and had a son.)
Since the late 1900s, their achievements have been recognized as "firsts" for people of African-American descent. James Augustine Healy became the first American bishop of African-American descent. Patrick Francis Healy was president of Georgetown College. And Eliza Healy became a Mother Superior in Vermont, one of the first African-American women to hold such a high position.
Michael Healy had a 20-year career with the United States Revenue Cutter Service. He is known today as the first person of African-American descent to command a federal ship. Three of the Healy children have been honored with buildings, awards, and even a ship named after them. The old site of the Healy family's farm in Georgia is now called River North. It has a country club and a memorial stone honoring the Healy Family.
Under the old slave laws, the children were legally enslaved because their mother was enslaved. They were often called "mulatto" in census records, a term used until 1930 for people of mixed race. Their lives have fascinated historians because of their great achievements and their unique family background.
Meet the Healy Family Members
James Augustine Healy: First Black Bishop
James Augustine Healy (1830–1900) was the top student in Holy Cross's first graduating class in 1849. He became a priest in the Diocese of Boston. On June 2, 1875, he became the Bishop of Portland, Maine. During a time when many Catholic immigrants were arriving, Bishop Healy helped establish 60 new churches, 68 missions, 18 convents, and 18 schools. Since the late 1900s, he has been recognized as the first American with African-American ancestry to serve as a Catholic bishop in the United States.
In 1962, Holy Cross named its newest dormitory Healy Hall in his honor.
Patrick Francis Healy: University President
Patrick Francis Healy (1834–1910) became a Jesuit priest. He was the first American with African ancestry to earn a PhD. He completed his studies at the Saint-Sulpice Seminary in Paris. In 1866, he was named a dean at Georgetown University. On July 31, 1874, at age 39, he became the president of Georgetown College. This made him the first known African American to lead such a large Catholic college.
Patrick Healy had a huge impact on Georgetown University. He is often called the school's "second founder." He helped turn the small 19th-century college into a major university for the 20th century. He updated the school's courses, requiring classes in sciences like chemistry and physics. He also improved the schools of law and medicine. Georgetown's Healy Hall, which houses the admissions office, is named after him.
Alexander Sherwood Healy: Talented Priest
Alexander Sherwood Healy (1836–1875), known as Sherwood, was also ordained as a priest in Paris in 1858. He earned a doctorate degree from the Saint-Sulpice Seminary there. He became an expert in Gregorian chant and earned another doctorate in canon law in Rome. He worked in the Diocese of Boston with his brother James. He later became a director of a Catholic seminary in Troy, New York, and then a rector in Boston. Sherwood died at age 39.
Michael Augustine Healy: Arctic Explorer
Michael Augustine Healy (1838–1904) was the fifth son. He was unhappy at Holy Cross and was sent to a seminary in France at age 15. But he wanted a more exciting life and ran away the next year. In England, he joined an American ship as a cabin boy in 1854. He quickly became a skilled sailor. Soon, he became an officer on merchant ships.
In 1864, Michael Healy returned to his family in Boston. He joined the Revenue Cutter Service as a Third Lieutenant. Michael served along the 20,000-mile coastline of the new territory of Alaska after the Alaska Purchase in 1867. In 1880, he was given command of a U.S. government ship. He was recognized in the late 1900s as the first African American to hold this position.
For 20 years, Captain Healy was like the federal government's main law enforcement officer in Alaska. He helped residents and sailors, acting as a judge, doctor, and policeman. The U.S. Coast Guard research icebreaker USCGC Healy (WAGB-20) is named in his honor.
Eliza Healy: A Leader in Education
Eliza Healy (1846–1919) was educated in Saint-Jean, Quebec. She later joined her family in Boston. Feeling a call to religious life, she returned to Montreal. In 1874, she joined the Congregation of Notre Dame and took her vows. This was the teaching order of her old school. After teaching in schools in Quebec and Ontario, Sister Mary Magdalen, as she was known, became the superior of a convent in Huntingdon, Quebec, in 1895.
In 1903, Eliza Healy returned to the U.S. She was appointed school administrator and Mother Superior of a Catholic convent, Villa Barlow, in St. Albans, Vermont. In her 15 years there, Sister Mary Magdalen improved the buildings and finances of the convent. In her last year, she served as Mother Superior for the Congregation of Notre Dame on Staten Island, New York.
While some have claimed she was the first African American woman to be a Mother Superior, at least two others came before her.
Other Family Members
Hugh Healy
Hugh Healy (1832–1853) graduated from Holy Cross. He was starting a hardware business in New York when he died at age 21.
The Healy Sisters
All three of the Healy girls, Martha, Josephine, and Eliza, went to the convent school of the Congregation of Notre Dame in Montreal. They all became nuns, inspired by the women and the school that had influenced them.
- Martha Healy (1840–1920) joined the Congregation of Notre Dame in Montreal in 1855. In 1863, she left the order and moved to Boston. On July 25, 1865, she married Jeremiah Cashman, an Irish immigrant. They had one child.
- Josephine Amanda Healy (1849–1883) also went to the convent school. After living with family in Boston, she joined the order of the Religious Hospitallers of Saint Joseph. She was the third of the siblings to die relatively young.
Eugene Healy
- Eugene Healy (1848–1914) was only two years old when his parents passed away. He was the only Healy child who did not achieve as much in life and seemed to struggle to find his path.
Later Generations
Martha and Michael, who both married and had children, chose Irish Catholic partners.
In 1865, Michael married Mary Jane Roach, whose parents were Irish Catholic immigrants. They had one son who survived, Frederick Aloysius (1870–1912). Frederick worked as a newspaperman in San Francisco. He later became a partner in a business firm.
On April 12, 1906, Frederick married Edith Rutland Hemming. They had three sons. Frederick Healy passed away from typhoid fever at his home in Santa Barbara, California. He was buried with his parents in Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, California.
