Friedrich Valentin Melsheimer

Background

Frederick Valentine Melsheimer was born on September 25, 1749 at Negenborn, near Holzminden, Duchy of Brunswick. He was the son of Joachim Sebastian and Clara Margaretha Melsheimer. His father was superintendent of the ducal forests.

Education

Melsheimer attended school at Holzminden, matriculated in 1769 at the University of Helmstedt.

Career

In 1776, Melsheimer was appointed chaplain of the Dragoon Regiment of Brunswick Auxiliaries commanded by Major-General Friedrich Augustus Riedesel, which was hired by the British Crown to help subdue the rebellious colonies in America. His journal for the period February 22 - September 21, 1776, published in that year, displays an admirable talent for topographical writing. He was wounded in the arm at the battle of Bennington, August 16, 1777, and was taken prisoner. He was one of a party of captured German officers who arrived at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, January 26, 1779, and were quartered there pending their exchange. While his friends were enlivening the village with their musical serenades, Melsheimer fell in love with Mary Agnes Mau, daughter of Samuel Mau, a former redemptioner. He meanwhile was exchanged for W. Cardelle, chaplain of the 11th Virginia Regiment, received permission to travel. He applied unsuccessfully for the pastorate at Lebanon, which had been left vacant by the death of John Caspar Stoever, Jr. Presumably he never intended to rejoin his regiment. That autumn he assumed the pastorship of five small Lutheran congregations in Dauphin County and attended the Tulpehocken convention of the Ministerium of Pennsylvania, into which, however, he was not received as a member until 1785. Later he served for three years as secretary of the Ministerium, was officially designated as an instructor in theology, and was chairman of the committee on English congregations. He was pastor at Manheim, Lancaster County, 1784-86; at New Holland, 1786-87; professor of Greek, Latin, and German in Franklin College, 1787-89, working manfully to keep the college alive; and finally pastor of St. Matthew's, Hanover, York County, from 1789 until his death. Besides being a faithful pastor he was an enthusiastic friend of education and a careful student of natural history, his Catalogue of Insects of Pennsylvania, Part First (Hanover, 1806) being the first volume published on the entomology of North America. It lists 1. 363 species of beetles, of which over four hundred have been identified. He was not a mere collector but paid considerable attention to food habits and mode of occurrence; his notes are few and brief but occasionally telling, as the description of the rose-bug "Habitat praecipue in rosarum floribus quas misere destruit. " Until the year of his death he maintained a correspondence with his school friend, August Wilhelm Knoch, who mentions him in his Neue Beyträge zur Insectenkunde, Erster Theil, and sent him hundreds of specimens of American insects. He is said to have contributed a description of Pennsylvania to the Schleswig'sche Journal of 1792 and geographical essays to the same periodical in 1794. He was also the author of Gespräche zwischen einem Protestanten und Rumischen Priester (Hanover, 1797) and Wahrheit der Christlichen Religion für Unstudirte. He was elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society in 1795. He died at Hanover and was buried in the yard of his church.

Achievements

• Melsheimer known as the author of the first major entomological work in the United States: A Catalogue of Insects of Pennsylvania (1806), a sixty-page work that describes 1, 363 species of beetles.

Membership

a member of the American Philosophical Society

Personality

Melsheimer was short in stature and frail of body, suffered for many years from a disease of the lungs, but remained active till shortly before his death. Two of his sons, Johan Friedrich and Ernst Friedrich, were Lutheran ministers and carried on his studies in entomology.

Connections

On May 10, 1779, Melsheimer married Mary Agnes Mau, daughter of Samuel Mau, a former redemptioner.

Father:

Joachim Sebastian

Mother:

lara Margaretha Melsheimer

Wife:

Mary Agnes Mau

Son:

Frederick Ernst Melsheimer

1782-1873 Was an American entomologist noted for his work on Coleoptera.

Son:

John Frederick Melsheimer

1780-1829

References

• History of Franklin and Marshall College; Franklin College, 1787-1853; Marshall College, 1836-1853; Franklin and Marshall College, 1853-1903
• Letters From America 1776-1779: Being Letters Of Brunswick, Hessian And Waldeck; Officers With The British Armies During The Revolution