Healy family of Georgia

The Healy family of Georgia became notable in U.S. history because of the high achievements of its first generation of children, who were born into slavery in Georgia in the second half of the nineteenth century. Most became prominent as leaders within the Catholic Church. They were mixed-race children of Mary Eliza Smith, a mulatto slave, and her common-law husband, Michael Morris Healy, an Irish Catholic immigrant from County Roscommon. He became a wealthy cotton planter in Jones County. Georgia prohibited slaves from being educated. As Healy was determined to provide a future for his children, he sent them North for their educations, as did some other wealthy planters with mixed-race children. Majority white in ancestry, the children varied in appearance. They were baptized and educated as Catholic in the North, and gained opportunities as Irish Catholics. Most of the sons first attended Quaker boarding schools in New York and New Jersey before transferring to a Catholic school in Massachusetts. All but the fifth son graduated from college. James, Patrick and Sherwood Healy all undertook graduate 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, one died at 21, and all three daughters became nuns. (One of the daughters later left the order, married an Irish immigrant, and had a son). Michael Healy, the fifth child, entered maritime service. Since the late 20th century, especially, their achievements have been recognized as "firsts" for people of known 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 attained the rank of Mother Superior in Vermont, the first person of African-American descent to reach this position. Michael Healy had a 20-year career with the United States Revenue Cutter Service. 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.

...
Wikipedia