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Oil on canvas, Samuel B. Waugh after Joseph Wright, 1881, Collection of U.S. House of Representatives |
MUHLENBERG, Frederick Augustus Conrad, (brother of John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, uncle of Francis Swaine Muhlenberg and of Henry Augustus Philip Muhlenberg, and great-great-grand uncle of Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg),
a Delegate and a Representative from Pennsylvania; born in Trappe, Pa., January 1,
1750; pursued an academic course; attended the University of Halle, Germany; studied theology and
was ordained by the ministerium of Pennsylvania a minister of the Lutheran Church October 25, 1770;
preached in Stouchsburg and Lebanon, Pa., 1770-1774, and in New York City 1774-1776; when
the British entered New York he felt obliged to leave, and returned to Trappe, Pa.; moved to New
Hanover, Pa., and was pastor there and in Oley and New Goshenhoppen until August 1779; Member
of the Continental Congress, 1779-1780; member of the Pennsylvania state house of representatives,
1780-1783, and its speaker, 1780-1783; delegate to and president of the Pennsylvania state
constitutional convention in 1787 called to ratify the Federal Constitution; elected as a Pro-Administration candidate to the First Congress, reelected as an Anti-Administration candidate to the
Second and Third Congresses, and elected as a Republican to the Fourth Congress (March 4,
1789-March 3, 1797); Speaker of the House of Representatives (First and Third Congresses); was
not a candidate for renomination in 1796; president of the council of censors of Pennsylvania; receiver
general of the Pennsylvania Land Office, 1800-1801; died in Lancaster, Pa., June 4, 1801; interment
in Woodward Hill Cemetery.
BibliographySeidensticker, Oswald. Frederick Augustus Conrad
Muhlenberg: Speaker of the House of Representatives in the First Congress, 1789. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 13 (July 1889): 184-206.
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