How many families
have you met in which there were nine children, of which three became
priests (one a bishop) and three became nuns? And another son became a
renowned ship captain guarding the coasts of American territory in
Alaska. Must have been an Irish family. Right? And how about if the
father was Irish born and the mother a mulatto slave? Never heard of
such a thing, you'd say. Well, meet the Healy family of Georgia.
Michael Morris
Healy immigrated to the US from County Roscommon, Ireland in 1818.
Within a few short years he became the owner of 1,500 acres of
fertile land near Macon, Georgia. He also accumulated 49 slaves to
farm the cotton from his plantation. Among them was one, Mary Eliza
Clark (sometimes referred to as Smith). She was to become his
common-law wife and the mother of his nine children. In Georgia at
that time, marriage between whites and blacks was not only illegal
but any children of such a union would be considered to be slaves. So
mother and children of the Healy family were all legally slaves. This
presented a danger and a dilemma to Michael Healy. In such a society
the children could not be educated in white-only schools and there
were no schools for slave children. So Michael designed a plan to
send all his children to the North where slavery did not exist and
where they could get a quality education.
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| Bishop James A. Healy |
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James Healy
was only seven years old in 1837 when his father took him north to a
Quaker school in Flushing, New York. He and his brothers, Hugh and
Patrick, remained there a year or two and later transferred to
another Quaker school in Burlington, New Jersey. A chance meeting
between the elder, Michael Healy and Catholic Bishop John Bernard
Fitzpatrick on board a ship traveling from New York to Boston, was to
change the direction and the fate of the Healy children for the rest
of their lives. Healy told the bishop about his family and Bishop
Fitzpatrick recommended that the Healy boys be enrolled in the newly
founded College of the Holy Cross run by the Jesuits in Worcester,
Massachusetts. This college initially offered even elementary school
grades and so in 1844, James 14, Hugh 12, Patrick 10, and Sherwood 8,
went to Massachusetts where they were baptized by the Jesuits of Holy
Cross and began their studies at the college. Young Michael Healy
followed his brothers to Holy Cross in 1849.
The four eldest
Healy boys were high academic achievers. In 1849 James was the
valedictorian of the first graduating class at Holy Cross. He ranked
academically at the top of his class and Hugh came out fourth.
Patrick ranked first in his class and Sherwood was second in his. The
fact that the boys did so well in their studies undoubtedly
compensated in some way for the fact that they were mixed-race
children in an all-white society. Also their sponsorship by Bishop
Fitzpatrick, who was by now head of the Boston diocese, went a long
way toward gaining acceptance for them in what could be a clearly
intolerant society. Others around them could fairly easily discern
that they had Negro blood. In most of them it was evident to a
greater or lesser degree. But Bishop Fitzpatrick saw their potential
and he began grooming them for a higher calling.
In May 1850, their
mother Eliza died unexpectedly. And their father Michael died only
four months later. There were still three minor children at home so
their brother Hugh, only 18 years old, traveled to Georgia (they were
still all considered slaves and could have been picked up as
runaways) and clandestinely brought his siblings north to safety in
Boston.
James expressed
interest in becoming a priest so Bishop Fitzpatrick sent him to
seminaries in Montreal and Paris. In 1854, James Healy was ordained
in the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, France. On his return the
bishop now faced a dilemma: whether to place him in a position where
he would be highly visible and possibly rejected because of his race,
or to send him to an obscure location where he might be less visible.
Bishop Fitzpatrick took a bold step making Healy his own secretary
and chancellor of the diocese. And because of Healy's great interest
in and compassion for the poor and the immigrant, of which the vast
majority of Catholic Boston was, he was positively received by most
people. In 1866 James Healy became pastor of S. James' Church, then
the largest parish in Boston. At St. James he was known to often
visit the homes of poor Irish immigrants with baskets of food.
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| Bishop James Healy gravesite |
In
1875 he was ordained bishop of the diocese of Portland, Maine, which
at that time covered the territory of Maine and New Hampshire. Prior
to his ordination, a priest of that diocese wrote to the Vatican
complaining that the people would never accept a mulatto to be their
bishop. The writer never received a response.
Bishop Healy headed the Portland, Maine
diocese for 25 years. Under his leadership the diocese expanded greatly,
opening 60 new churches, 68 missions and 18 convents and schools. He
celebrated his Silver Jubilee as bishop on June 29, 1900 and five
weeks later he died. As he had requested, he was buried not in a
bishops vault, but in a simple coffin in Calvary Cemetery. A Celtic
cross, placed by his own parishioners, marks his grave.
Hugh Healy
was the second eldest son. Although he too did very well at Holy
Cross, he was not interested in the priesthood as was his brother
James. He had a more entrepreneurial spirit. He was working in the
hardware business when he was involved in boating accident. A
resulting infection was the cause of his death at the young age of
just 21 years. While we don't know a lot about him, we can speculate
that he truly had a daring spirit to have gone to Georgia to rescue
his two little sisters and brother after their parents deaths. The
fact that they were still all legally slaves and would be at great
risk on the journey back north, and that he himself was only 18 years
old, is almost beyond imagination. How he brought them or arranged to
have them transported north is something that history has not
recorded.
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| Patrick Healy, SJ |
Patrick Healy
was the next in line. From all reports he had almost no discernible
features from his mother's mulatto heritage. But he knew who he was
and always carried a certain sensitivity within himself. He was
received into the Jesuit order and after two years he was sent back
to Holy Cross in Worcester for his internship to teach. Because the
students knew who his brothers were, they passed racially insensitive remarks at times
“which wound my very heart” he wrote to Fr. Fenwick, an old
mentor.
Patrick
progressed and went on to study at Louvain in Belgium where he earned
his doctorate degree. He was ordained a priest in September 1866 and
returned to the US to teach at Georgetown University. The Jesuits
were concerned that because of his racial background he might not be
accepted by the general student body comprised of many southerners.
For that reason, at first he was assigned to teaching just Jesuit
scholastics. After a year or two he became a philosophy professor
teaching the general student population and in 1874, at 39 years of
age, he was named the 29th
president of Georgetown University.
In spite of his great talents and
accomplishments, Patrick still sometimes experienced offensive moments because of his racial background from
those who knew who he was. In his role as university president he
traveled extensively often staying in Jesuit houses. Once an old
Jesuit remarked that some houses would not welcome him because no one
would be willing to sleep again in the bed he had occupied. On the
other side of the coin, showing his real accomplishments, on another
occasion a student, the son of a Confederate general, not recognizing
Patrick's racial background, said of him that he was “a finished
scholar, a remarkable linguist, and the clearest thinker and
expounder of his thoughts that I have ever met.”
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| Fr. Sherwood Healy |
Alexander Sherwood Healy (always
called Sherwood) was the fourth son. Bishop Fitzpatrick was certainly
a strong advocate for the Healy brothers. But when the time came to
advocate for Sherwood, the bishop saw it more difficult because of
his more pronounced Negro features and because of the anti-Negro
sentiment that was growing in Boston society. Like his brother James,
Sherwood studied at the seminaries in Montreal and Paris and was
ordained in Notre Dame in 1858. But when the time came for his return
to the US, Bishop Fitzpatrick sensed Sherwood's reticence. The debate
over slavery in the US was reaching a crescendo just prior to the
outbreak of the Civil War. “He feels an unwillingness for reasons
which I cannot condemn, to return to this country” Fitzpatrick told
a papal official. And so Sherwood to went to Rome for advanced
studies. A year later there was an opening for the position of rector
of the new North American College in Rome, and again Fitzpatrick
hesitated, writing in a letter that it was “useless to recommend
him” because “he has African blood and it shows distinctly in his
exterior” fearing that because of his race, the seminary students might
not respect him. Had Bishop Fitzpatrick not hesitated, Sherwood might have become the first rector of the North American College in Rome. Instead Sherwood returned to the US with his doctorate
degree in Canon Law and an expertise in Gregorian chant.
In his early years back in Boston,
Sherwood was chaplain to the Angel Guardian home and worked with his
brother James who was chancellor of the Boston diocese. His expertise
in church law and church music certainly came into play in this
assignment. By 1870 he had been appointed rector of the new cathedral
of the Holy Cross which was still under construction. Later he was
appointed professor of Moral Theology and director of student
discipline at St. Joseph's Provincial Seminary in Troy, New York.
Sherwood's career in the priesthood was cut short by his death in
1875 at the age of 39 years.
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| Captain Michael A. Healy |
Michael Healy was the rebellious
brother. In 1849 he was enrolled at Holy Cross in Worcester like his
brothers before him. But it became evident early on that the studious
life didn't suit him. In 1854 he was sent off to the seminary in
France but lasted only a short time there. He ran away to England and
became a merchant seaman. The seafarers life seemed to be a better
fit. He continued working on the ships until he returned to the US in
1863 with the intention of joining the Revenue Cutter Service, the
predecessor of today's US Coast Guard. Because of his seafaring
experience, a year later he became a commissioned officer (his
commission was signed by President Abraham Lincoln) and was soon
given command of a ship patrolling the waters around the newly
acquired Alaskan territory.
Because Michael's complexion did not
reveal his mother's mulatto heritage, he easily passed for white. In
1865 he married Mary Jane Roach, the daughter of Irish immigrants,
and they had one son. He was accepted into white society apparently
as an Irish-American with no hint of his African bloodline. According
to Boston College professor, James M. O'Toole, Michael Healy had so
conscientized himself as white that he referred to white settlers in
Alaska as “our people”. This same identity was apparently passed
on to his son who while accompanying his father on an Alaskan patrol
in 1883, scratched his name onto a rock on an island off the coast.
He wrote into his diary that he was the first “white boy” to do
so.
Michael Healy's wild side never left
him even in the Revenue Cutter Service. He had a reputation as a
highly skilled seaman and had a knack for contending with the wild
people and the even wilder weather of what was then the still
unexplored Alaskan coast. He engineered several successful Arctic
whaling ship rescues in the most challenging weather conditions. Ice
was one of the most treacherous factors that a ship captain had to
face in these waters and Healy became adept at dealing with it. In
addition, effectively dealing with some of the most unsavory
characters in a part of the world as yet somewhat uncivilized,
“Hell-Roaring Mike” as he was known, became the symbol of law and
order to his men on the ships and to the population on land. Once in
a heated shipboard altercation, a crewman to whom he laid down the
law, threw the worst epithet he could at him saying that he was “a
God-damned Irishman”.
It was because of his stern and often
severe approach that he was once court-marshaled for cruelty to his
crew. He was acquitted of this charge but later in 1895 again he was
court-marshaled, this time for drunkenness, for gross irresponsibility and
“scandalous conduct.” Sidelined for a while, Healy returned to
service again as a captain after the Alaskan gold rush. He retired in
1903 and died a year later.
In January 2012 when the Alaskan
town of Nome on the Bering Strait was running low on fuel oil because
of an early ice floe blocking the coast, the US Coast Guard Cutter
Michael A. Healy opened the way through 300 miles of packed ice up to
five feet deep for a Russian tanker to deliver the needed oil to the
town. The legacy of Hell-Roaring Mike still lives!
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| US Coast Guard Cutter Healy (left) opening the way for Russian tanker Renda |
Of the remaining four Healy children,
three girls and one boy, we know much less than about the older
boys. The girls were said to look more like their mother but there
are no surviving photographs to verify that. On the recommendation of
Bishop Fitzpatrick, the three girls went to school at the
Congregation of Notre Dame convent in Montreal. And after they
graduated all three wanted to be nuns.
Martha was the oldest and she entered
the Congregation of Notre Dame in 1851. She stayed only a short while
and left religious life to return to Boston. She eventually married
Jeremiah Cashman, an upwardly mobile Irishman.
Amanda Josephine joined the Religious
Hospitallers of Saint Joseph in Canada. She died at the young age of
39 years.
Like her older sister Martha, Eliza Dunamore joined the Congregation
of Notre Dame in Montreal. Known as Sister Mary Magdalene, she taught
for a number of years in Quebec and Ontario. In 1903 she was
appointed Superior of the Villa Barlow convent and school in St.
Albans, Vermont. This was a school for the daughters of the New
England upper crust society. As headmistress she pulled the school
out of debt and reorganized the faculty and curriculum. After 15
years there, Sister Mary Magdalene was transferred to the College of
Notre Dame in Staten Island, New York again as community superior.
She died there in 1918 from cancer.
All that is known about Eugene, the
youngest Healy child, was that he did not have success in life. Never really
establishing himself, he went from one job to another and
occasionally landed in jail.
A Postscript
Reading through the material on the
history of the Healy family, it is to be noted that while they surely
knew of their African American roots, they all lived and worked in a
basically all-white society. None of them ever expressed interest
in the plight of the African slave in the 19th century United States. And interestingly too, while they undoubtedly knew of their father's Irish heritage, they didn't overtly identify with being Irish either. They immersed themselves completely into the society to which fate had delivered
them, even with their personal hesitancy and fears. Several
suffered the injury of insults because of their racial background,
but none of them ever seemed to fight back. I am sure that many
reasons may be put forth to explain why this happened, but because we
can never know what they felt and thought on the inside, the
explanation for their outward behaviors in this context will remain a mystery.
In his book, Passing for White:
Race, Religion and the Healy Family, 1820-1920, Professor James
M. O'Toole points out that while Eliza Healy and her children were
legally classified as slaves, they were never treated as such. Of
course they had to be careful not to cross swords with the legal
authorities who could make trouble for them because of their status.
But the fact that Michael Healy thought of Eliza as his “trusty
woman …. the mother of my children” and that he lived with her as
a husband with his wife, and that he cared for the welfare of his children and
their education, made a great difference. In addition, the fact that he
had the financial means to do so, also greatly enhanced their chances for a better life.
According to O'Toole, the Healy
children became white at a time when racial issues were
reaching an all-time high in the ante-bellum years. And they were
able to do so not only because their skin complexions were not very dark,
but because they had the support and patronage of Bishop Fitzpatrick and the Holy Cross Jesuits. The church itself had not been a bastion of anti-slavery up
to that point. In fact the views and practices of many church
communities were very pro-slavery. But thanks to the particular church
people they met and who interceded for them, and also because of their
own intelligence which was recognized by the church, they were able
to pass for white.
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