High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Healy family of Georgia became notable in U.S. history because the siblings achieved much in the second half of the nineteenth century, most within the Catholic Church. They were born in Jones County, Georgia to Mary Eliza, a mulatto slave, and her common-law husband, Michael Morris Healy, an Irish Catholic immigrant from County Roscommon, who became a wealthy cotton planter. As they were born into slavery, the children were prohibited from being educated in Georgia, although they were majority European in ancestry. The wealthy planter sent his mixed-race children to the North for education to ensure their futures. The sons attended a combination of Quaker and later Catholic schools in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, with Patrick and Sherwood earning doctorates at Saint-Sulpice in Paris, France. The three daughters were educated at Catholic convent schools in Montreal, Canada.