Africana Homestead Legacy Publishers

Harry Bradshaw Matthews

Employed in higher education for thirty-two years, Harry Bradshaw Matthews is associate dean and director of U.S. Pluralism Programs in the Office of Academic Affairs at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Black-Hispanic studies and political science from the State University of New York College at Oneonta and his master of arts degree in counseling education from Northern Michigan University. He has also worked at SUNY Oneonta, Northern Michigan University, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and Gettysburg College.

Matthews is the grandson of Richard Parler, Jr., of Denmark, S.C., who was enslaved part of his life. While Matthews was an undergraduate, the Jamaican anthropologist, Dr. Ena Campbell, encouraged him to conduct primary research on his family’s history. Becoming a noted specialist on the Killingsworth lineage, Matthews is a Killingsworth descendant from South Carolina.

During later years, Matthews published on genealogical research and intercultural diversity and awareness. He is author of African American Genealogical Research: How to Trace Your Family History and Whence They Came: The Families of United States Colored Troops in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1815-1995. He also wrote Honoring New York’s Forgotten Soldiers: African Americans of the Civil War, Voices from the Front Line: New York’s African American Statesmen of the Underground Railroad Freedom Trail and the "United States Colored Troops Organized in the Empire State, 1863-1865," an essay in the inaugural issue of New York Archives, Vol.1, No. 1, Summer 2001, and an entry on the United States Colored Troops for the Encyclopedia of New York, released by Syracuse University Press in 2005. His expertise garnered him regional and national media attention, from A&E Cable Network Magazine, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, and others. Matthews also is profiled in Civil War Reenactment: Grand Review 2000, a video by Emmy-Award winning producer, Russ Hodge.

Matthews is founding president, senior fellow, and executive director of the United States Colored Troops Institute (USCTI) for Local History and Family Research, a national membership body headquartered at Hartwick College. He and the USCTI have garnered awards and recognition, including a 2003 Black Caucus Veterans Braintrust Award and proclamations from New York’s Governor Pataki in 1998, honoring the United States Colored Troops from the Empire State, and in 2006, declaring Issac Newton Arnold Day. Matthews is an appointed member, 2006-2007, of the New York State Commissioner of Education’s Advisory Council for State and Local History.

Africana Homestead Legacy Publishers titles

African American Freedom Journey in New York and Related Sites, 1823-1870: Freedom Knows No Color
ISBN 978-0-9799537-4-3 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-9799537-3-6 (softcover)
October 2008