HENRY MELCHIOR

See also:

• HENRY MELCHIOR MUHLENBERG (1711–1787)
• MUHLENBERG, JOHN PETER GABRIEL (1746–1807)
• MUHLENBERG, WILLIAM AUGUSTUS (1796-1877)

MUHLENBERG (1711–1787)  , German-American 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 Gottingen 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 hi 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 for 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 . See Life and Times by William J . Mann (Philadelphia, 1887) .