Michael Morris Healy

Michael Morris Healy was born on September 29, 1796 in County Roscommon, Ireland. He was an 19-year-old immigrant who deserted the British Army in Nova Scotia during the War of 1812, in 1815 . In 1818, Michael took the Oath of Allegiance to the United States, his adopted country, at the Jones County Courthouse. He participated in the lotteries that were redistributing land that had been seized from the Cherokees, the Creeks, and other Native American tribes. In the lotteries of 1823 and 1832, he won land in Jones County, just across the Ocmulgee River, from the rising market town of Macon GA.

He prospered as a cotton farmer and a landowner, eventually owning 1,500 acres of land. Of the roughly 500 landowners in the county, he ranked 35th in the extent of his holdings, very much at the top of the economic heap. Like other cotton farmers, he owned slaves — 49 of them, at a time when the average master in the county owned only 14.

In 1829, he took Mary Eliza Clark Smith, a 16 year old mulatto slave girl as his common-law wife. Under the laws of Georgia, and indeed of most other states at the time, marriage between blacks and whites was forbidden. For more than 20 years, Michael and Eliza Healy lived and loved together faithfully, but they were never formally and legally married; in his will, Michael referred to her simply as "my trusty woman, Eliza, mother of my... children." It was also illegal for Michael Healy to free his wife, either while he lived or by his will. Freeing slaves required a special act of the state legislature, and was therefore unheard of. Legally, the 10 Healy children they had together were slaves also — throughout the South, children always took the condition of their mother. Even though they were never treated as such, Healy could not free them any more than he could free his wife.

Both Michael and Eliza died months apart from each other in 1850 and are buried together on the plantation.