Healy family

The Healy family of Georgia became notable in U.S. history because of the siblings' high achievements in the second half of the nineteenth century, particularly within the Catholic Church. They were born in Jones County, Georgia, to Mary Eliza Smith, a mulatto slave, and her common-law husband, Michael Morris Healy, an Irish Catholic immigrant from County Roscommon, who became a wealthy cotton planter. Born into slavery because of their mother's status, the mixed-race children were prohibited from being educated in Georgia. They were majority European in ancestry, and Healy was determined to provide them with educations. He sent them to the North, as did many planters with mixed-race children. The sons attended a combination of Quaker and later Catholic schools in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. James, Patrick and Sherwood all did further studies at the Saint Sulpice Seminary () in Paris, and the latter two earned doctorates there. The three daughters were educated at long-established Catholic convent schools in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Of the nine children who lived to adulthood, three of the sons became ordained Catholic priests and educators, while all three daughters became nuns. (One later left the priesthood, married an Irish immigrant, and had a son). James Augustine Healy became the first American bishop of African descent, and Eliza Healy attained the rank of Mother Superior, the first person of African-American descent to reach this position. Michael Healy, the youngest boy, joined the United States Revenue Cutter Service, a predecessor of the U.S. Coast Guard. Today he is noted as the first person of African-American descent to command a federal ship. Three of the Healy children have been individually honored by the naming of various buildings, awards and a ship for them. The former site of the Healy family's plantation near Macon, Georgia is now called Healy Point. It includes the Healy Point Country Club.

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