Jane Hibbard Clark Healy

Jane Hibbard Clark was the wife of my great-great-great Uncle, Joseph  Warren Healy.  His sister, my 3rd great grandmother, was Rosina Healy Richardson.  Their (Rosina and Joseph) parents were Nathaniel Healy and Jane Tabor. Nathaniel Healy was a school teacher and provided his children an excellent education.  He loved to write  poetry.  Joseph Warren Healy learned first from his parents and then he and his wife later attended graduate school in Burlington, VT. Both Joseph Warren Healy and Jane Hibbard Clark attended seminary and they both taught at the schools at which they later worked.  They taught at Bath Academy in Bath, New Hampshire and later at Topsfield Academy in Topsfield, Massachusetts.  Joseph Warren Healy went on to be first a professor, then a minister and later became a medical doctor as well.   After the Civil War he

became the first president of Straight University, a school of higher education established for Black Americans. In 1870 Joseph and Jane were raising funds in Europe for the University. 

Joseph Warren Healy and Jane Hibbard Clark Healy were devoted to each other.  They weathered many storms together including infertility followed by the very short life of the one child they conceived and gave birth to, Jane Corinne Healy.  Later they adopted a son named Frank Joseph Healy who later became a journalist.  He sort of disappears after working in Indiana and then Cleveland in 1897.  Nothing about him so far after that. He would have been 23 years old when his mother died.    

 

In summer of  1880 Jane Hibbard Healy took a trip to Corinth, Vermont to visit family and friends. She had apparently been suffering from overwork and stress and took the trip to relax and renew her strength.  She had a great visit and was feeling much better.  However, in September while planning her return home she took ill and died rapidly.  When Joseph arrived, it was all over except for the grief.

This little booklet was published as part of the celebration of her life.  Her husband, Joseph Warren Healy, was initially prostrated by the loss of his life companion.  A few years later (according to the Topsfield Academy book) he moved to San Diego and taught medicine and other classes and was President of Sierra Madre college at its incorporation.  He married a widow Ellen White in 1884.  He died in 1887 and is buried in San Diego, in a cemetery down by the airport.