On April 6, 1830, Rev. James Healy was born in Georgia to an Irish immigrant and a biracial enslaved woman. James and his siblings were sent North to be educated. James attended Holy Cross, and was in the first graduating class of 1849, of which he was valedictorian. He was ordained a priest in 1854, and named bishop of Portland, Maine in 1875, making him the first African American to become a Roman Catholic bishop.
A few days ago, I wrote about the first sentence in the paragraph above: https://alwaysatthestartingline.blogspot.com/2026/04/reverend-healys-mother-eliza-clarke.html
Today I want to talk a bit more about Reverend Healy’s parents, Eliza Clark and the creep that enslaved her.
Here’s what we know about Reverend James Healy’s father. Michael Healy was born in 1796 in the western part of Ireland, possibly Roscommon or Galway. He may have fought for the British in the War of 1812 and may have deserted the British Army. He may have lived in Canada before moving to Georgia around age 19, where some sources say he had relatives.
In 1818, he acquired vast acreage across the river from Macon, Georgia via a lottery. This land was ceded by the local native population. ‘Ceded’ here likely means that the natives were violently removed from their lands, which were stolen from them.
Back in the 1820s, this land was remote, wild, and fertile. Healy made money fast. Records show he owned 49-60 slaves at a time when the average slaveowner in the area owned five.
So to sum up so far, like many other southern white men of the time, Healy accepted and benefitted from stolen property and he made big bucks off the literal sweat, blood, and deaths of others. Descriptions of Healy and other men of the time, rarely bring up the fact that these people were, in today's terms, predators. Historians seem to gloss over this horror instead, by referring to him and those like him as successful and wealthy.
Eliza Clark was a biracial slave of African and European descent, who, with her mother and some siblings, was bought by Healy for $3,700 in 1829. Like most biracial slaves of the time, Eliza was likely the product of what today we’d call rape. Because her mother was not only a slave but black too, her mother had no chance in hell of ever having bodily autonomy. If her enslaver or another white man wanted to rape her, he could.
Considering that Eliza was biracial, some white guy definitely did rape her mother, who couldn’t fight back. She could get abused even more or even killed for putting up a fight. History books rarely explain this. They write ‘biracial’ and leave it up to us to decide whether or not we want to acknowledge the horror behind that word.
Slave owners raped female slaves. This was common and acceptable. Under Georgia law, slaves were commodities like cows and sheep. It was normal for female slaves to be used as breeders and for their progeny to be sold for profit.
Healy bought Eliza because he liked the way she looked. We don't know more than that. We don't know if her bought her for company or for breeding or for both.
Because he bought her mother and her siblings too - - supposedly, according to some historians, to keep her happy (but there's no evidence to suggest this) some sources say he was generous and in love. These sources, in the few instances where I can find the authors’ names, are all white and middle-aged or older men. Based on the same evidence that they use to declare the guy was head-over-heels in love, I posit this: Healy was a narcissistic, sadistic megalomaniacal predator who got high on ruining the lives of others.
Healy bought Eliza when she was sixteen. He was thirty-four. Those facts alone speak volumes. He had all the power, wealth, rights. She had no power or wealth. She had no rights. Plus, she had no lived experience. She was a slave and knew nothing outside of her life as a slave.
He on the hand was a grown man who had grown up on one continent, fought in a war, then traveled to another continent and two countries before settling down. He had knowledge of the world outside of the patch of property that was Eliza’s home.
Plus, let's take into account what we know now about human development: Today we know that female frontal lobes aren’t fully developed until our mid-20s. Eliza was, for all intents and purposes, a child. Healy was a man, in all ways, shapes, forms. I think I’m pretty justified in describing him as I did.
By today’s standards, all of this is horrifying. In the 1820s, this was not. If Eliza had been white, certainly her youth would have raised some concerns. Though the age of consent in Georgia was 12, most white women married around age 21. Because Eliza was black and a slave, she had no rights. So, the age of consent wouldn’t have applied to her at all. She could have given birth at age 10 and legally, that was just fine. White men in Georgia had all the power. They could do anything they wanted to black men and women. It's possible Eliza maybe had already had babies by the time she was sold to Healy. We don’t know. It’s not unlikely.
Healy may have had some feelings for Eliza, but in the grand scheme of things, who cares? Seriously how does that even matter? I’m not giving an ounce of grace to any predator. But I’ll give every bit of sympathy I can conjure up to this young woman who history barely acknowledges.
Eliza had ten live births from first-born James’s in 1830 to her death in 1850. We know this because live births were recorded and those documents still exist. We don’t know how many times she was pregnant, though. Miscarriages and stillbirths weren’t generally recorded. It’s not out of this world to suggest she may have been pregnant 15 or more times. It’s likely she spent the entirety of the rest of her life, from age 16 to her death, either pregnant or recovering from pregnancy.
The average white woman at that time gave birth to six children over the course of their lifetime, four less than Eliza. During this time period, pregnancy and birth problems were major causes of death for women. Some historians point to the amount of children Eliza had and say – wink, wink – there’s proof that Healy loved her. I think any people who interpret those facts in that manner need to have their heads examined. No loving partner in their right mind would ever subject their loved one to two decades of near- death experiences. I’m not buying into the whole context-of-the-times thing and I don’t have facts to back me up. I have a sense of humanity though and a clear understanding of the difference between right and wrong, which I think puts me ahead of the game when it comes to anyone who characterizes his interactions as loving.
There is one document where Healy mentions Eliza. In a letter, he described her as his “trusty woman.” Some historians jump on that as proof that he had deep feelings for her and didn't see her as a slave, a breeder, but rather as his wife. I'm not buying that either. Those exact words were commonly used to describe servants back in the day.
There’s no other evidence that Healy harbored any tender feelings for Eliza. Eliza died in 1850, at just 36/37 years old. Even for that period, this was on the young side. There was a cholera outbreak in the area at the time, so this could have been the cause of her death. Her youngest child was a year old so it’s possible she was pregnant again and died in childbirth. Or perhaps her body had been so weakened by the constant pregnancies that she never properly recovered from the birth of that last child.
Healy died a few months after Eliza. He was 56. This was a younger than average death too. Still, I'm not shedding any tears here. He got to live a much fuller life than Eliza. He got to choose how he wanted to live. Eliza led a much smaller life, one she had no control over. The fact that she was able to carry on and survive as long as she did is, I think, heroic. I'd rather remember her, Eliza Clark, a relentless, courageous mother to many.
I have more to share about her kids and will do that soon. I'll also share a list of my sources too. More later.
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