The Muhlenberg family dynasty played a major role in Pennsylvania politics and religion from the 1741 arrival of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, founder of the Lutheran Church in America. This collection contains material from the first four generations of the family in America, beginning with a 2-page letter fragment signed by the family patriarch, the first of his autographs known at auction since 1906. From the next generation is a small bundle of sermon notes in German, 1798-1813, on 34 unbound slips of paper, unsigned but possibly by the patriarch's son Gotthilf Heinrich Ernst Muhlenberg (1753-1815), a Lutheran minister in Lancaster PA during that period. His son, congressman Henry A.P. Muhlenberg (1782-1844), is represented by an 1836 broadside discussing his role in helping an escaped slave, and an 1841 letter. Finally, the 1833 diary is unsigned but apparently by Hiester Henry Muhlenberg (1812-1886) of the fourth generation, then a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania medical school. He describes his two-month "tour in search of pleasure & health" up the Hudson River, westward to Niagara Falls, thence to Montreal and Quebec, south to Boston, and home to Pennsylvania. He provides an interesting account of the sleeping berths on an Erie Canal boat, and a visit to a Shaker village. He also describes a 26 August conversation with a fellow tourist from Ohio who knew his cousin Francis Swaine Muhlenberg (1795-1831), briefly a United States Congressman, and reported that "it was the doctor's opinion he had died from taking opium, but that the affair had been hushed up as much as possible." The collection also includes two substantial family chronicles, one in German and the other in English, relating to the Muhlenbergs and Hiesters through the early 19th century. Complete inventory available upon request.
