Henry (Gotthilf Heinrich Ernst) Muhlenberg (1753–1815), Lutheran clergyman, botanist, and educator, was the son of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, a German immigrant and eminent Lutheran Church leader in America. A native Pennsylvanian, the younger Muhlenberg was educated at Halle, Saxony (1763–70), including study at its university. Soon after returning home in 1770, he was ordained a Lutheran minister and served several congregations in the Philadelphia area. In 1780 Muhlenberg moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he spent the rest of his life as pastor at Holy Trinity Church. He served as secretary of the Ministerium of Pennsylvania for six terms and president for eleven terms. Muhlenberg pursued the systematic study of botany, examining and documenting the flora surrounding Lancaster, collecting the earliest important American herbarium, and investigating the economic and medicinal uses of plants. About 1783 he began collaborating with other American and European botanists, and in 1785 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society. Muhlenberg was the first principal of Franklin College (later Franklin and Marshall College), 1787–1815. His published works include an English-German dictionary and works on native and exotic plants of North America (ANB description begins John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds., American National Biography, 1999, 24 vols. description ends ; DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; Paul A. W. Wallace, The Muhlenbergs of Pennsylvania [1950]; Sprague, American Pulpit description begins William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, 1857–69, 9 vols. description ends , 9:59–66; Herbert H. Beck, “Henry E. Muhlenberg,” Castanea 3 [1938]: 41–53; APS description begins American Philosophical Society description ends , Minutes, 22 Jan. 1785 [MS in PPAmP]; James A. Mears, “Some Sources of the Herbarium of Henry Muhlenberg (1753–1815),” APS description begins American Philosophical Society description ends , Proceedings 122 [1978]: 155–74; Joseph Henry Dubbs, History of Franklin and Marshall College [1903]; Philadelphia Poulson’s American Daily Advertiser, 26, 30 May 1815).

Muhlenberg’s catalogue of north american plants, entitled Catalogus Plantarum Americæ Septentrionalis huc usque cognitarum Indigenarum et Cicurum: or, A Catalogue of the hitherto known Native and Naturalized Plants of North America, arranged according to the sexual system of Linnæus (Lancaster, 1813; Sowerby, description begins E. Millicent Sowerby, comp., Catalogue of the Library of Thomas Jefferson, 1952–59, 5 vols. description ends no. 1088), was followed by the posthumously published descriptio uberior (“richer description”), entitled Descriptio Uberior Graminum et Plantarum Calamariarum Americæ Septentrionalis Indigenarum et Cicurum (Philadelphia, 1817). For the publication of Meriwether Lewis’s journal, see editorial note at TJ to Paul Allen, 18 Aug. 1813.