Henry Melchior Muhlenberg

Henry Melchior Muhlenberg is the principal organizer of American Lutheranism. He was born in Einbeck, Germany, in 1711, and studied at Goettingen and at Halle. Lutherans in America at that time were found in a few scattered communities, of various national backgrounds, with no central organization, and with a grave danger of factionalism. Several congregations wrote to Halle University, asking for a pastor to take charge. Hermann Francke, a Lutheran leader of the Pietist movement at Halle, chose Muhlenberg and sent him to America. He arrived in Charleston on 23 September 1742. He was soon accorded widespread recognition by Lutheran churches, German, Swedish, and others, as the senior Lutheran pastor in America. He set the tone for the Lutheran community in what was to be the United States, and almost all Lutheran Churches in America today use liturgies which are developed from the one that he proposed for American use. His plans for local church government, presented to congregations that had been accustomed to a great deal of government control, eased the transition to the "free church" model, and form the basis for plans of local church government in American Lutheran churches today. One of his sons, John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, served as a general under George Washington in the War of Independence. Another, Frederick Augustus Conrad Muhlenberg, became a member of the Continental Congress, and first speaker of the House of Representatives. A great-grandson, William Augustus Muhlenberg, became an eminent Anglican priest (see 8 April). Henry Melchior Mhuhlenberg died 7 October 1787, and is buried at Trappe, Pennsylvania. His epitaph (in Latin) reads: "Who and what he was, future ages will know without a stone." -James E. Kiefer MUHLENBERG, HENRY MELCHIOR (1711-1787), GermanAmerican Lutheran clergyman, was born in Einbeck, Hanover, on the 6th of September 1711. When he was twelve years old his father, a member of the city council, died. The son entered the university of Gottingen in 1735, and his work among the poor of Göttingen led to the establishment of the present orphan house there. In 1738 he went to Halle to finish his theological studies; he was a devoted worker iii the Franckesche Stiftung, which later served as a partial model for his great-grandson's community at St Johnland, Long Island. He was deacon at Grosshennersdorf, in Upper Lusatia, in 1739?1741. In 1742, in reply to a call from the Lutheran churches of Pennsylvania, he went to Philadelphia, and was joined from time to time, especially in 1745, by students from Halle. Muhlenberg occupied himself more particularly with the congregation at New Providence~ (now Trappe), though he was practically overseer of all the Lutheran churches from New York to Maryland. In 1748 he organized the first Lutheran synod in America. Muhlenberg married in 1745 Anna Maria Weiser, daughter of J. Conrad Weiser, a well-known Indian interpreter, and herself said to have had Indian blood in her veins; by her he had eleven children. Throughout the War of Independence he and his sons (see below) were prominent patriots. He died at Trappe on the 7th of October 1787. The importance of his work in organizing and building up the American Lutheran Church, of which he has been called the Patriarch, can hardly be exaggerated; but his example in preaching in English as well as in German was, unfortunately fo.r the growth of the Lutheran Church, not followed by his immediate successors. He had no sympathy with the Old Lutherans and their strict orthodoxy?on the contrary he was friendly with the Reformed congregations, and with George Whitefield and the Tennents.-1911 Encyclopedia