J.H.C. Helmuth (412)

Justus Henry Christian Helmuth (16 May 1745–5 February 1825) was a clergyman, scholar, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1784. Orphaned at a young age in Germany, a local nobleman provided for him by first sending him to an orphanage and then a Latin school. Ordained in 1768 or 1769, Helmuth answered a call for a Lutheran pastor across the Atlantic in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Two years later, he married into an influential German merchant-trader family. In 1779, Helmuth relocated to Philadelphia to serve as pastor for the city’s first Lutheran congregation, St. Michael’s. He had a significant relationship with the University of Pennsylvania: he earned honorary A.M. and D.D. degrees (1780,1785), was professor of German and Oriental languages (1792-1794) and an ex officio trustee (1780-1784). In 1985 Helmuth also co-founded a German-Latin school for young Lutherans. Upon the outbreak of Yellow Fever in 1793, he heroically remained at his post to serve his sick and dying congregation. In 1812, he initiated the first American Lutheran periodical, Evangelische Magasin. Throughout his life he published many scholarly works, notably his account of the Yellow Fever epidemic, a collection of German Hymns, as well as children’s books. Helmuth retired from his pastorship in 1820 and died five years later.