James Augustine Healy
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The Most Reverend James Augustine Healy |
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|---|---|
| Bishop of Portland | |
 |
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| Predecessor | David William Bacon |
| Successor | William Henry O'Connell |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 10 June 1854 |
| Consecration | 2 June 1875 by John Joseph Williams |
| Personal details | |
| Born | April 6, 1830 Macon, Georgia, United States |
| Died | August 5, 1900 (aged 70) |
| Nationality | American |
| Denomination | Roman Catholic |
James Augustine Healy (April 6, 1830 – August 5, 1900) was the first Roman Catholic priest and the first bishop in the United States of any known African descent. He identified and was accepted as a white Irish American, as he was of majority Irish ancestry; when he was ordained in 1854, his mixed-race ancestry was not widely known outside his mentors in the Catholic Church. (Augustus Tolton, a former slave who was publicly known to be black when ordained in 1886, is therefore sometimes credited as the first black Catholic priest in the U.S.) Healy was one of nine mixed-race siblings of the Catholic Healy family of Georgia who survived to adulthood and achieved many "firsts" in United States history.
James Healy was the eldest of 10 siblings born near Macon, Georgia, in 1839 to Michael Morris Healy, an Irish immigrant plantation owner, and his common-law wife Eliza Smith, a mixed-race African American slave. Born in 1795, the senior Healy immigrated from County Roscommon in Ireland in 1818. He eventually acquired 1,500 acres (6.1 km2) of land in Jones County, Georgia, across the Ocmulgee River from the market town of Macon. He became among the more prominent and successful planters of the area, and eventually owned 49 slaves for his cotton plantation, which was labor-intensive. Among these was a young slave woman named Mary Eliza Smith, whom he took as his wife in 1829. Various accounts have described Mary Eliza as "slave" or "former slave," and as mulatto or African American (the latter term includes people of mixed ancestry). The common-law marriage of Michael and Mary Healy was not such an unusual occurrence among immigrants; state law prohibited interracial marriage. Most of their ten children, all but one of whom survived to adulthood, achieved noteworthy success as adults, helped by Healy's financial success and the educations he ensured for them in the North.
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