William Augustine Williams

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William Augustine Williams (also William Augustine Willyams/Willyms or Gullielmus Williams; May 26, 1836 — May 21, 1901) was an African-American linguist, librarian, Catholic seminarian, and public figure. He was the first openly African-American Catholic seminarian—preceding Augustus Tolton—but was never ordained, having left Rome's Pontifical Urban University in 1862 after facing racist opposition to his prospective ministry in the United States.^[1]

Born in 1836, Williams became a barber, a Catholic, and a seminarian in quick succession, moving to Rome for priesthood studies in 1855. He remained there for the better part of a decade before returning to Baltimore in 1862, where he briefly attempted a number of religious projects (including a continued aspiration for the priesthood) before turning to secular work.^[1]

He would become a prolific teacher, writer, speaker, pioneer in Black librarianship at Enoch Pratt Free Library and the Catholic University of America, and was at one point recommended to President Ulysses S. Grant as the US ambassador to Liberia.^[2]

Later in life he moved to New York City (in 1899), where he served as sacristan at the historic St. Benedict the Moor Church. He was published in the New York Times shortly before his death in 1901 at the age of 65. In an obituary, he was termed "the best-known Negro in New York".^[3]