Frederick Augustus Mühlenberg was an American educator and Lutheran clergyman, who served (among other positions) as President of Muhlenberg College, and as Greek language and literature professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Background
Frederick Augustus Mühlenberg was born on August 25, 1818, at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the second of the five children of Frederick Augustus Hall Mühlenberg by his first wife, Elizabeth Schaum.
His father, a physician, banker, and prominent citizen of Lancaster, had been a pupil of Benjamin Rush and was a graduate in arts and medicine of the University of Pennsylvania; his mother was a grand-daughter of John Helfrich Schaum, who was sent from Halle to Philadelphia in 1745 to work as a catechist under H. M. Mühlenberg.
Education
Frederick Augustus entered Pennsylvania (now Gettysburg) College in 1833, only a few months after its opening, but transferred later to Jefferson (now Washington and Jefferson) College at Canonsburg, where he graduated in 1836. While at Jefferson he was much influenced by its president, Matthew Brown, a Calvinist of deepest dye, whose character was more genial than his doctrine.
After a year's breathing spell at home, studying anatomy and physiology with his father, Mühlenberg spent the year 1837 - 1838 at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Career
Mühlenberg entered on his long career as an educator. Though he wrote little, he was a notable scholar, especially in Greek, and an excellent teacher, inculcating, at least in his apter pupils, an accurate, appreciative knowledge of the Greek classics and efficient habits of study and thought. As professor or president he contributed richly to the life of five colleges of his native state.
He was a member, 1840 - 1850, of the faculty of Franklin College at Lancaster, of which his grandfather had been the first president, and in 1849 proposed the union of Franklin, Marshall, and Pennsylvania colleges. This motion led to the transfer to Pennsylvania College in 1850 of the Lutheran interest in Franklin College and to the organization in 1852 - 1853 of Franklin and Marshall College as an institution of the German Reformed Church.
Mühlenberg was the first incumbent, 1850 - 1867, of the Franklin professorship of ancient languages in Pennsylvania College, his tenure corresponding almost exactly with the presidency of Henry Louis Baugher.
He was licensed in 1854 and ordained in 1855 by the Ministerium of Pennsylvania, preached regularly in Christ Church, and was librarian of the college. During the Gettysburg campaign his house was pierced by a shell and pillaged by marauding soldiers.
In 1867 Mühlenberg removed to Allentown to become the first president of Mühlenberg College. For nine years, besides teaching Greek, the mental and moral sciences, and the evidences of Christianity, he bore the burdensome responsibility of organizing and administering a college that was crippled from the start by financial difficulties. With the able cooperation of two of the professors, Matthias Henry Richards and Theodore Lorenzo Seip, he kept the college alive, and when he resigned in 1876 its continuance and usefulness seemed assured.
For the next twelve years he was professor of the Greek language and literature in the University of Pennsylvania. For the first time since his graduation from college he recrossed the Alleghenies in 1891 to assume the presidency of Thiel College at Greenville, which was in dire need of his firm, orderly control.
Having reorganized the institution, Mühlenberg retired in 1893 at the age of seventy-five. He spent his last years in Reading, where he died on March 21, 1901, and was buried in the Charles Evans Cemetery.
Achievements
Frederick Augustus Mühlenberg was a renowned educator, serving among other positions as Greek language and literature professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a college president as well as a Lutheran clergyman.
Personality
In generous measure Frederick A. Mühlenberg possessed the vigor of mind and body, the executive capacity, and the strong sense of duty that were recurrent traits in his family.
Connections
On August 8, 1848, Frederick Mühlenberg married Catharine Anna, daughter of Maj. Peter Muhlenberg, U. S. A. , and grand-daughter of John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg. The couple had six sons.
