Eliza Healy

Eliza Healy (December 23, 1846 – September 13, 1919) was an educator, a member of the Congregation of Notre-Dame and the first African-American Catholic . She is a member of the Healy family, which is known for its illustrious achievements in spite of institutional racial segregation in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Born in 1846 in Macon, Georgia, Eliza Healy was the youngest daughter of Michael Morris Healy, an Irish immigrant and successful plantation owner, and Eliza Clarke, a biracial slave. Born in County Roscommon, Ireland, Michael travelled to Canada as a member of the British army. He then emigrated to Jones County, near Macon, Georgia. The couple lived together from 1829 until their deaths in 1850 and raised 10 children, nine of which survived to adulthood. Because of the partus sequitur ventrem principle, Eliza and her siblings (James, Hugh, Patrick, Sherwood (Alexander), Michael, Martha, Josephine (Amanda) and Eugene) were legally considered slaves, even though their father was a free white man and they had three fourths white ancestry. Georgia state law at the time prohibited slaves from receiving an education and prohibited manumission, so the Healy children were sent to the North to have an education and higher quality of life than what slaves in the South were accorded. When Eliza's parents died within months of each other in 1850, her five older brothers and one older sister were already living in the North. The three youngest Healy children, including Eliza, left Georgia after their parents' death and relocated to New York.

Even though Michael was Catholic, his children were not baptized Catholics. Eliza and her two younger siblings, Josephine (Amanda) and Eugene, were baptized Catholic in New York in 1851. Eliza and Josephine both attended schools operated by the Congregation of Notre-Dame in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and in Montreal, Quebec. Eliza and Josephine joined their siblings in Boston, Massachusetts when Eliza finished her secondary education in 1861.

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