Henry Muhlenberg

Henry Muhlenberg
Engraving of the Rev. Henry M. Muhlenberg
Born	Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg September 6, 1711 Einbeck, Germany
Died	October 7, 1787 (age 76) Trappe, Pennsylvania
Education	University of Halle
Children	see Muhlenberg Family
Church	Pennsylvania Ministerium
Title	Patriarch of the Lutheran church in America

Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (an anglicanization of Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg) (September 6, 1711 – October 7, 1787), was a German Lutheran pastor sent to North America as a missionary, requested by Pennsylvania colonists.

Integral to the founding of the first Lutheran church body or denomination in North America, Muhlenberg is considered the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in the United States. Muhlenberg and his wife Anna Maria had a large family, several of whom had a significant impact on colonial life in North America as pastors, military officers, and politicians. His and Anna Maria's descendants continued to be active in Pennsylvania and national political life.

Muhlenberg was born in 1711 at Einbeck, to Nicolaus Melchior Mühlenberg and Anna Maria Kleinschmid in the German Electorate of Brunswick-Lüneburg (also known as Hanover). He studied theology at the Georg-August University of Göttingen. As a student, Muhlenberg came under the influence of the Pietist movement through fellow students from Einbeck who had worked at the Francke Foundations in Halle (Saale), an important Pietist institution. With two other men, Muhlenberg started a charity school in Göttingen that eventually became an orphanage.

After completing his studies in spring 1738, Muhlenberg secured a teaching position at the Francke Foundation's Historic Orphanage. Its director, the theologian Gotthilf August Francke was the son and successor of the Foundation's founder, August Hermann Francke and a professor at the University of Halle.