"Michael Augustine Healy"(Septemper 22,1839-August 30 1904).

 Was an American captain in the United States Revenue Cutter Service (predecessor of the United States Coast Guard).Following  US Secretary of  State William H.Seward's Alaska Purchase  of the vast region in 1867,Michael patrolled the 20,000 miles of Alaskan coastline for more than 20 years, earring great respect of the natives and seafarers a like.After commerical fishing had depleted the whale and seal populations,his assistance with introduction of Siberian reindeer helped prevent starvation among the native Alaskans.Nicknamed "Hell Roaring Mike,"Captain Michael Healy became the first African American to command a ship of the United States government.One of his commands,the USRC Bear,was an inspiration used by Author Jack London.Commissioned in 1999,USCGC Healy was named in his honor.Michael Healy was the fifth of 10 siblings born near Macon,Georgia in 1839  to an Irish immigrant plantation owner and his common-law wife an African American former slave.Born in 1795,Michael Morris Healy emigrated from county Galway in Ireland in 1818  and eventually acquired 1,500 acres of land in Jones County Georgia,across the Ocmulgee River from the market town of Macon.He became  among the more prominent and successful planters,and came to own 49 slaves for his labor-intensive farming enterprise.Among these was a girl named Mary Eliza (or Clark),whom  he took as his wife in 1829.Mary Eliza Healy has been described in various accounts as both "slave and former slave" and as both mulatto and African American.Under common practice in the United States which was later termed the One-drop-rule,"persons of any amount of mixture of Caucasian and African racial heritage were generally considered to be black.By that criterion,both their mother and all of the Healy children were considered African Americans regardless of what they looked like.The common-law marriage of Michael and Mary Healy violated a powerful taboo of 19th-century America:marriage between persons of different races,termed miscegenation.Despite this,most of the children of the Healy family of Georgia,all but one of whom survived to adulthood,achieved noteworthy success as adults.Michael and two of his brothers were were destined to achieved notable first for African-Americans,although Michael's career took a much different path from any of his brothers and sisters.Laws in Georgia prohibited educations of blacks wheather they were slaves or free.Such anti-literacy laws were especially common in southern states following the violent Southampton insurrection led by Nat Turner in 1831.To overcome the potential harm of these and other obstacles to his children,the father made arrangements to send his children to northern states to attend soon as each was old enough.The oldest son,James,born in 1830,was sent to Flushing New York in 1837 where he attended a Quaker school.He was later transferred to another Quaker school in Burlington,New Jersey.Progressively several of James younger brothers followed him in this path.However,the arrangements at the Quaker schools were not without some problems for the boys.In additional to racial issues,the fact their family back home in Georgia owned slaves was in conflict with Quaker principles.While traveling,the senior Michael Healy met John Bernard Fitzpatrick,the Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Boston and learned of new [College of the Holy Cross] in Worcester,Massachusetts,which was at that time accepting children of grammar school age.In 1844,James transferred to Holy Cross,joined by three of his younger brothers,aged 12, 10,and 8.Michael was 6 years old,enrolled at Holy Cross in 1849.All four of the older brothers graduated from Holy Cross.Hugh decided to go into business in New York,but was killed in an accident at age 21.Michael's three other older brothers each entered the priesthood.James Augustine Healy was ordained in 1854 as the first African-American priest in the Catholic Church.He later became the first African-American Catholic bishop in the United States when he was named the second bishop of the Diocese of Portland  in 1875.Patrick Francis Healy became a Jesuit,became the first African-American to earn a PhD and was named 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 ordained as a priest,and also obtained his doctoral degree.He became an expert in cannon law,and served as director of the seminary in Troy,New York  and rector of the Cathedral in Boston.Sherwood as he was known,used his musical talent to form the Boston Choral Union which helped raise funds for a new cathedral.However,his career was cut short by an early death at age 39.All three of Michael sisters attended parochiial schools in Canada,and afterward,each became a nun.Not long after,Martha the oldest,left her convent to marry.Josephine joined the Religious Hospitallers of Saint Joseph,and Eliza the Congregation of Notre Dame in Montreal,where she later reached the level of Mother Superior.Michael apparently preferred a more adventuresome life than his oldest brothers than his brothers.Before he was 12 years old,both parents had died.His oldest brother James became something of a surrogate parent.However,despite considerable effort,he was unable to convince Michael to follow a similar career path.Unhappy and rebellious at Holy Cross he was sent at the age of 15 to a seminary in France.However,he fled the school the following year.In England, he signed aboard the American East Indian Jumma as a cabin boy in 1854.However he became an expert seaman.Soon thereafter,he rose to the rank officer on merchant vessels.In 1864,Michael returned to his family in Boston.He applied for a commission in the Revenue Cutter Service and accepted as a third Lieutenant,his commission being signed by President Abraham Lincoln.In 1865,Michael married Mary Jane Roach,who was the daughter of Irish immigrants.Mary Healy is recorded as a durable and supportive wife who traveled with her husband.Despite 18 pregnancies,she bore only one child who survived, a son named Frederick was was born in 1870.Under US Secretary William H.Seward,during the adminstration of President Andrew Johnson,in 1867, the Alaska Purchase took place.The huge territory,with 20,000 of coastline,was initially called by many skeptics "Seward's Folly."Lieutennant Healy made his first trip to Alaskan waters in 1868 aboard the USRC Rush. He attained the rank of Captain in 1880.By 1882 he was given command of the USRC Thomas Corwin and was throughly familar with the Bering  Sea and Alaska.The Corwin's responsibilities included liquour enforcement,protection of seal and whale protection protected by treaty, delivery of supplies, mail and medicines  to remote villages,the return of deserters to merchant ships, the collection of weather data,rending of medical assistance,search and rescue, enforcement of federal laws and exploration work.During the last decades of the 19th Century,Captain Healy  was essentially the federal government's presence in the vast territory.In his twenty of service between San Francisco and Point Barrow, he acted as: judge,doctor,and policemen, to Alaskan natives,merchant seaman and whaling crews.The Native Americans throughout the vast regions of the north came to know and respect this skipper and called his ship"Healy's Fire Canoe."Michael  operated in an eerie echo of what become the mission of his Coast Guard successors a century later:protecting the natural resources of the region,suppressing illegal trade,resupply of remote outposts,enforcement of the law,and search and rescue.Even in the early days of Arctic operations,science was an important part of the mission.Renowned naturalist John Muir made a number voyages with Michael during the 1880s as part of an ambitious Scientific program.During visits to Sibera across the Bering Sea from the Alaskan coast,Captain Healy observed that the Chukchi people had domesticated reindeer and used them for food,travel,and clothing.With the reduction in seal and whale populations from commerical fishing activities,and to aid in transportation,working with Reverend Sheldon Jackson,a Presbyterian missionary and political leader in the territory,Michael helped introduce reindeer from Siberia to Alaska to provide food,clothing and other necessities for the native peoples.This work was noted in the New York Sun newspaper  in 1894.Captain Healy's special compassion for the native population was expressed in many deeds and in his standing order:"Never make a promise to a native you do not intend to keep to the latter.Captain Healy retired in 1904 at the mandatory retirement age of 64.He died on August in San Francisco of a heart attack.He was buried in Colma,California.His African-American heritage was still unknown to the public and the government at the time.