The Muhlenberg Family

The Muhlenberg family was a prominent German Lutheran family in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Pennsylvania, specifically in Berks County. The family patriarch, Reverend Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, was a Lutheran minister who immigrated from Germany in 1742 and is often credited with the founding of the American Lutheran Church. During the eighteenth century, the Muhlenberg family is recoreded to have had owned enslaved people in Pennsylvania. Personal and estate records provide evidence of enslaved individuals living and working in the Muhlenberg's Berks County home, and especially by Peter Muhlenberg, Henry's son. Having been a general in the Continental Army, and later a member of the United States House of Representatives, Henry was a man with a considerable amount of local presence and influence, marking his particular contribution to the propagation of institutional slavery as notable. As one of the county’s most influential families, the Muhlenbergs were among the numerous prominent Pennsylvania households that participated in slavery during the colonial period.