Henry E. Muhlenberg (453)

Henry E. Muhlenberg (17 November 1753–23 May 1815) was a clergyman, botanist, and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1785. Born to a patriarch of the Lutheran Church and his wife in Trappe, Pennsylvania, Muhlenberg attended school in his hometown until his family’s relocation to Philadelphia in 1761. Not long after the move, his family sent him and his brothers to a boarding school in Halle, Saxony. Remaining there after finishing his primary studies, Muhlenberg spent a year at the University of Halle pursuing theology and church history. He returned to Philadelphia in 1770, gained ordination and began working as his father’s assistant. He married Mary Catherine Hall in 1774, with whom he would go on to have eight children. Despite his family beginning to take root in Philadelphia, Muhlenberg found he had no choice but to flee Philadelphia disguised as an Indian upon the outbreak of Revolutionary War hostilities in the region. Returning to his hometown of Trappe, he took up the study of botany.

A few years later, the Muhlenbergs relocated to Lancaster after Henry Muhlenberg’s appointment as pastor of Holy Trinity Church (1780). There, he utilized his growing botanical knowledge to offer plant-based medicines to himself and parishioners alike. The first native-born American to cultivate a professional herbarium, the pastor began eagerly corresponding with and trading seeds and specimens with other major botanical figures on both sides of the Atlantic. He became the first principal of Franklin College (later Franklin and Marshall College) (1787), made numerous contributions to Johan David Schöpf’s Materia Medica Americana (1787) despite never receiving any credit for this work; he published his first paper, “Index Florae Lancastriensis” in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (1793); and finally published his massive Catalogus Plantarum Americae Septentrionalis (1813), which listed 3,700 species of native and naturalized plants. In addition to these imprints, Muhlenberg also composed thousands of pages of botanical descriptions in his personal manuscripts. In 1815, he suffered a paralytic stroke which hindered his activities. Helped by his daughter, however, Muhlenberg continued his correspondences until the sudden recess of his paralysis. Despite his condition seemingly reversing itself, a final series of strokes took his life not long after. (ANB, et al.)