William E. Matthews was born in Baltimore, Maryland in July 1845. His father died when he was twelve and William assumed responsibility for the family. During the US Civil War, Matthews was an agent of the Gilbraith Lyceum which was working for the education of black people in Maryland. Matthews' role including travelling throughout the state to help organize schools and discuss the transition of the people from slavery to citizenship. He also served as a pastor of a Baltimore Church at this time. After the war, in 1867, he became an agent for a group organized by Bishop Daniel A. Payne organized to found schools and build churches among the freedmen throughout the southern United States. He continued with this work for three years and part of his work involved his speaking at many wealthy churches in the northern states. His fundraising put him in contact with many leading intellectuals including Henry Ward Beecher, Henry W. Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Cullen Bryant, and John Greenleaf Whittier.
Business
He spent much of his spare time in real estate, amassing considerable wealth and experience. In 1870 he was appointed clerk in the United States Postal Service in Washington DC, the first black person to receive an appointment in that department. He began to attend Howard University, graduating from the law department in 1873 in a class with Joseph E. Lee, Jacksonville, Florida's first black lawyer, Henry Wagner, US Consul at Lyons, France, Durham W. Stevens, who was a diplomat and was assassinated while working for Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and John S. Leary, J. H. Smith, and John A. Moss. In 1881, he resigned from the Postal Service and opened a real estate and broker's office in the Le Droit Building in Washington DC. He was very successful in his business and his clients included Frederick Douglass, Daniel Payne, James T. Bradford, Charles Burleigh Purvis, Samuel L. Cook, William R. Francis, T. J. Minton, and John M. Brown. Matthews was also very active working for civil rights, and was a participant in the Colored Conventions Movement. At Howard, Matthews had been a student of John M. Langston, and later he worked with Langston and with Frederick Douglass for the organization of blacks to work for civil rights. He and Douglass were elected representatives of a New York convention in 1892 and met with President Benjamin Harrison in 1892 to discuss lynchings and violence against blacks throughout the south.
Other activities and death
He was a member of the 15th Street Presbyterian Church in Washington DC and for a long time the chairman of its board of trustees. He was a noted orator, giving a noted eulogy to the Unitarian preacher and abolitionist John Fothergill Waterhouse Ware. He contributed to the A.M.E. Church Review. He was also an active Republican. Matthews died in the early morning of May 2, 1894.
