William M. T. Forrester (November 1847–25 May 1910), businessman and fraternal order leader, was born free in Richmond to Narcissa Forrester and Richard Gustavus Forrester, who would later become one of Richmond's first Black members of the city council. Forrester lived his early years in the household of his father's great-aunts Catherine Hays and Slowey Hays, both devout Sephardic Jews, and with Excy Gill, a long-time servant to the Hays family. Bequests from the Hays sisters and Gill after their deaths in the mid-1850s helped the Forrester family to live more prosperously than most free Blacks could in Richmond prior to the Civil War. In the war's aftermath the Forresters remained one of the city's more prominent Black families but likely still fell victim to harassment and restrictions such as repressive pass requirements and curfew laws that white leaders directed at African Americans.
Generally known as W. M. T. Forrester, his full name may have been William Manning Taylor Forrester. By 1866 he was working as a barber, one of the most successful professions among African Americans. He likely apprenticed under Lomax Smith, who owned a barbershop stand at Richmond's Exchange Hotel, which catered to the city's wealthy businessmen. Forrester lived in Smith's household and on 5 February 1868 married Smith's daughter, Elizabeth A. C. Smith. They had at least six sons and six daughters, and perhaps as many as eighteen children. In 1870 and 1872 Forrester was included in records of depositors to the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company. By 1875 he was working as a tailor and had moved his family to West Leigh Street in the African American neighborhood of Jackson Ward.
Forrester had become an established community leader who was then serving as Right Worthy Grand Secretary of the Independent Order of Saint Luke, a mutual benefit insurance society that provided assistance to members in times of unemployment, illness, and death. In addition to documenting the order's rituals, regulations, and ceremonies in two publications issued in 1877 and 1894, he also helped establish dozens of local councils with more than 2,100 members by 1880. Saint Luke's growth stagnated, however, and after approximately thirty years at the helm, Forrester resigned his post in August 1899 amid declining membership, mounting debts, and a salary dispute, as Maggie Lena Walker took over leadership of the order.
Early in the 1870s Forrester was secretary for the Lone Star Lodge of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows. He was also a Mason, serving as Worshipful Master of Warren Lodge, No. 14, and of Social Lodge No. 6, of the Most Worshipful United Grand Lodge of Virginia, for which he was a statewide lecturer. As two of the largest Black secret fraternal organizations in the country, the Odd Fellows and the Prince Hall Masons became increasingly popular for their community support and civic functions, notably grand parades with rich pageantry and colorful regalia. Recognizing a business opportunity, Forrester established his own regalia manufacturing business about 1877, creating and selling emblems, paraphernalia, and ritual attire to African American secret societies and ultimately building an international enterprise.
In October 1880 Forrester was elected Grand Master of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows of America, with his formal installation in January 1881. Reportedly the youngest man to serve as the Odd Fellows' national leader, he traveled around the country giving speeches to build support for the order and increase membership. His efforts were widely recognized, and Forrester often appeared in the pages of the Richmond Planet and the Washington, D.C., People's Advocate as well as white-owned newspapers. Asked his opinion in 1890 on establishing a national day celebrating the emancipation of enslaved people, Forrester encouraged the idea, commenting that "if we enjoy the principles the Constitution guarantees us as free and equal citizens we should certainly show that we appreciate it." A highlight of his tenure was hosting the Odd Fellows Grand Master of England, Captain Richard Hill-Male, when he visited Richmond in 1894. Following an honorary parade measuring ten blocks long, Hill-Male, Richmond Planet editor John Mitchell Jr., and Forrester made public speeches deploring the racial prejudice that Black Odd Fellows faced in building the order in the United States. In the Planet, Mitchell reported Forrester's "points of true eloquence as he pictured the struggles of his brethren who had gone on before while a smile lit up his countenance as he told of its triumphs." Forrester served a total of seven two-year terms as Grand Master, but was not reelected at the national meeting in October 1894 and stepped down from the position early in 1895.
During this period he continued to serve Richmond's African American community in fundamental ways. Seeing the need for a new burial ground for the city's Black population, in 1891 he led efforts in founding the Greenwood Memorial Association of Virginia to establish a burial ground that would compare to Hollywood Cemetery, which was restricted to whites only. Lawsuits by white homeowners near the proposed site halted Greenwood Cemetery's development, but in 1895 the directors purchased a new plot of land in eastern Richmond in another attempt to establish a burial ground. Financial difficulties continued, however, and by the following year Forrester had left as the association's president. The city eventually purchased part of the land as a cemetery for indigent African Americans, which was restored in 2007, after decades of disrepair, and renamed the Garden of Lillies. The Greenwood name was informally attached to the East End Cemetery later established by former members of the association.
When President William Howard Taft concluded his tour of western and southern states in Richmond in November 1909, Forrester was among the group of distinguished businessmen, educators, attorneys, physicians, and ministers who met briefly with him at the Capitol. William M. T. Forrester died at his home of a stroke on the evening of 25 May 1910. The funeral service at Saint Philip's Episcopal Church was crowded with many wishing to pay tribute to Forrester, whom the Richmond Planet described as "the leading figure in the life of the leading secret organization" among African Americans in the country for more than a quarter of a century. He was buried in Evergreen Cemetery.
Sources Consulted:
United States Census Schedules, Richmond City, 1860–1880, 1900 (with birth date), 1910, Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Washington, D.C.; Richmond City Marriage Register, 1853–1878; Richmond Daily Dispatch, 12 Feb. 1868; Richmond city directories, 1869–1910; applications dated 17 Feb. 1870 (no. 1045), 13 Apr. 1870 (no. 1355), and 8 Oct. 1872 (no. 5584) in Registers of Signatures of Depositors in Branches of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company Records, 1865–1874, Records of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Record Group 101, NARA; Richmond State, 5 Oct. 1880, 9 Oct. 1880, Washington, D.C., People's Advocate, 16 Oct. 1880, 22 Jan. 1881; Richmond Planet, 27 Sept. 1890 (first quotation), 6 Dec. 1890, 30 June 1894 (second quotation), 13 Oct. 1894, 2 Feb. 1895 (portrait), 13 Nov. 1909; Ryan K. Smith, Death & Rebirth in a Southern City: Richmond's Historic Cemeteries (2020), 216–218; Death Certificate (with age 61), Richmond City, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; death notices and obituaries in Richmond Virginian, 26 May 1910, Richmond Times-Dispatch, 26 May 1910, and Richmond Planet, 28 May 1910, 4 June 1910 (account of funeral and third quotation).
Photograph in Fiftieth Anniversary—Golden Jubilee: Historical Report of the R. W. G. Council, I. O. Saint Luke, 1867–1917 (1917).
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Lee Ann Timreck.
How to cite this page:
Lee Ann Timreck, "William M. T. Forrester (1847–1910)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2025 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Forrester_William_M_T, accessed [today's date]).
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