Siblings
All four of the older Healy brothers (James, Hugh, Patrick, and Sherwood) graduated from Holy Cross. Hugh decided to go into business in New York, but died from an infection contracted in a boating accident at age 21. Patrick and Sherwood each entered the priesthood.
Patrick Francis Healy became a Jesuit, earned a PhD in Paris, and is now considered the first African American to have gained the degree. He was named a dean at Georgetown University in 1866. At the age of 39, in 1874, he assumed the presidency of what was then the largest Catholic college in the United States.
Alexander Sherwood Healy was also ordained as a priest, and earned his doctorate degree at the Sulpician Academy in Paris, where he became an expert in canon law and Gregorian chant. After working with his brother in Boston, he was appointed director of the Catholic seminary in Troy, New York, and rector of the Cathedral in Boston. His career was cut short by his death at age 39.
Younger brother Michael Augustine Healy preferred a more adventuresome life. He left the school at the age of 16 to go to sea. In England, he signed aboard the East Indian clipper Jumna as a cabin boy in 1854 and quickly became an expert seaman, rising to an officer. In 1864, Michael Healy returned to his family in Boston. He applied for a commission in the Revenue Cutter Service and was accepted as a Third Lieutenant, his commission being signed by President Lincoln. In 1880, Healy became the first African American to be assigned command of a US government ship. During the last two decades of the 19th century, Captain Healy was essentially the federal government's law enforcement presence in the vast Alaska Territory. Commissioned in 1999, the U.S. Coast Guard research icebreaker USCGC Healy (WAGB-20) is named in his honor.
The three Healy daughters became nuns, although Martha, the first, soon left the order and moved to Boston, where her brothers were. She married an Irish immigrant and they had one son. Josephine Healy joined the Religious Hospitallers of Saint Joseph in Canada.
Eliza Healy (1846–1918) joined the Congregation of Notre Dame in Montreal. After teaching for years at Catholic schools in Quebec and Ontario, in 1903 she was appointed the first African-American Mother Superior at a Catholic convent and school, the Villa, in St. Albans, Vermont.
Eugene Healy (1848-?), the youngest son, struggled in his life and did not achieve as much as his siblings.
Read more about this topic: James Augustine Healy
Famous quotes containing the word siblings:
“As siblings we were inextricably bound, even though our connections were loose and frayed.... And each time we met, we discovered to our surprise and dismay how quickly the intensity of childhood feelings reappeared.... No matter how old we got or how often we tried to show another face, reality was filtered through yesterday’s memories.”
—Jane Mersky Leder (20th century)
“The more parents intervene, the more siblings fight. And the bigger role parents assume in settling arguments, the less chance siblings have to learn how to resolve conflicts for themselves.”
—Jane Mersky Leder (20th century)
“Just because multiples can turn to each other for companionship, and at times for comfort, don’t be fooled into thinking you’re not still vital to them. Don’t let or make multiples be parents as well as siblings to each other. . . . Parent interaction with infants and young children has everything to do with how those children develop on every level, including how they develop their identities.”
—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)