Featured Lutherans

Abdel Ross Wentz (1883-1976) was a significant leader within American Lutheranism mid-twentieth century as both an interpreter-teacher and as a leader in Lutheran participation in formation of both the Lutheran World Federation and the World Council of Churches. From his base as Professor of Church History (1916-1956) and President (1940-1951) of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at ...

Charles A. Lindbergh was one of the most famous aviators of the 20th century. He is chiefly remembered for successfully flying the first solo non-stop flight from New York to Paris in 1927, which brought him instant international recognition. He used his popularity to promote the development of commercial aviation and U.S Air Mail. Born ...

Charles Philip Krauth was born May 7, 1797 in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. In 1819 the Ministerium of Pennsylvania licensed Krauth to preach. After serving Lutheran congregations at Martinsburg and Shepherdstown, Virginia, he was called in 1827 to Philadelphia to take charge of the recently organized English congregation. He became a trustee of the Lutheran Theological Seminary ...

Pennsylvania German, “Dutch” pioneer, interpreter, diplomat, farmer, soldier, tanner, judge, successful businessman and family patriarch, Conrad Weiser is best known for his work with native Americans.  As Indian agent for several colonies, especially Pennsylvania, but also New York and Virginia,  he negotiated every peace treaty from 1732 up to and during part of the French ...

Elsie Singmaster (Lewars) was an O Henry and Newberry award winning author of short stories and books during the first half of the twentieth century. Singmaster is well known for her stories about the Pennsylvania Germans from whom she descended on her father’s side. A resident of Gettysburg from 1900-1958, she also wrote widely about ...

Francis Rawn Shunk, the tenth Governor of Pennsylvania from 1845 to 1848, was born on August 7, 1788 near Trappe, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, the son of John Shunk and Elisabeth Rawn.  Shunk served in the Pennsylvania militia during the War of 1812. After the war he married Jane Findlay, daughter of former Pennsylvania Governor William ...

Frederick Augustus Conrad Muhlenberg was born January 1, 1750 in Trappe, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, son of the noted Lutheran theologian Henry Melchoir Muhlenberg. Like his father, Frederick received his theological training at the University of Halle in Germany and was later ordained as a Lutheran minister by the Ministerium of Pennsylvania on October 20, 1770. ...

Henry Melchoir Muhlenberg, considered to be the patriarch of the Lutheran Church in the United States, was born September 16, 1711 in Einbeck, Hanover, Germany. A graduate of the Georg-August University of Göttingen in 1738, Muhlenberg studied theology at the University of Halle. In 1742 he immigrated to Philadelphia in response to an official request ...

Henry Hanson was elected to the presidency of Gettysburg College from his ministry at Messiah Lutheran Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A graduate of Roanoke College and the Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg, he held numerous honorary degrees. He was highly regarded as a pastor and synodical leader before coming to Gettysburg. The longest-serving president in the ...

John Andrew Shulze was born July 19, 1774 in Tulpehocken Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania, the son of Lutheran minister Christopher Emmanuel Shulze and grandson of Henry Melchoir Muhlenberg.  Ordained as a Lutheran pastor in 1796, he left the ministry for health reasons in 1802 to become a merchant.  In 1806 he took his place in ...

A pioneer German Lutheran pastor in Pennsylvania, Stoever was born in the Lower Palatinate. He arrived in Philadelphia in 1728, having had some private theological training, and soon began a ministry that lasted for a half a century. After several years spent in the Philadelphia area, during which he was ordained, he moved into Lancaster ...

John Christian Frederick Heyer was the first missionary sent out by Lutherans in America. Born in Germany on July 10, 1793, he came to America in 1807 to escape the Napoleonic wars. He studied theology in Philadelphia and the University of Gottingen. Back in America, he was licensed as a lay minister and preached in ...

John Peter Shindel Gobin was born in Sunbury, Pennsylvania on January 26, 1837, the son of John S. and Susan (Shindel) Gobin. He was named for his grandfather, the Rev. John Peter Shindel, a pioneer Lutheran minister in Northumberland County. He learned the printing trade at the Sunbury American, then studied law and was admitted ...

Margaret was a woman with deep Lutheran roots, and a Gettysburg College pioneer and scholar. She was born in 1875 in the home of her maternal grandfather, the Rev. Charles A. Hay, on Seminary Ridge where Hay was teaching at the Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg. Her father, John A. Himes, taught at Gettysburg College (then Pennsylvania ...

Professor Martin Luther Stoever, an American Lutheran educator and writer, was born on February 17, 1820, in Germantown, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Pennsylvania (now Gettysburg) College in 1838. Although he originally intended to go into ordained ministry, Stoever entered the education field instead, becoming principal of a classical academy in Maryland from 1838 to 1842. ...

First woman on the national staff of a Lutheran denomination. Mary Markley, duaghter of the Reverend A. B. Markley, was born in Millerstown, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Ursinus College (1902) and received a master’s degree in English from Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia, before becoming supervisor of the Service House for the National Commission ...

For some, the name Mary Gingrich Stuckenberg (1849-1934) is synonymous with working with the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, raising funds for the American Church in Berlin, or founding the Woman’s Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. For others, she is known as the wife of John Henry ...

Michael Jacobs was born January 18, 1808 in Waynesboro, Franklin County, Pennsylvania.  Licensed as a Lutheran minister in the Western Pennsylvania Synod in 1832, he served as one of the pastors at Christ Lutheran Church in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  From 1828 to 1865 he also served as a professor of mathematics and natural science at the ...

Rev. Daniel Wiseman (1858-1942) served the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer in Washington, D. C., from its founding until his death in 1942.  The first Lutheran African-American pastor in the nation’s capital, he was the only one during his lifetime.  Although not the first  Lutheran African-American pastor east of the Alleghenies, no other served ...

Samuel Simon Schmucker was born in Hagerstown, Maryland on February 28, 1799. Educated at the University of Pennsylvania and the Princeton Theological Seminary, Schmucker became one of the first and foremost (and sometimes controversial) Lutheran scholars of his day, writing extensively on theology and doctrine. He helped organize the General Synod of the Lutheran Church ...

Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker was born April 9, 1843, in Phoenixville, Chester County, Pennsylvania.  As a student during the Civil War, he served in Company F, 26th Pennsylvania Emergency Militia during the Gettysburg campaign, fighting in a brief skirmish north of Gettysburg on June 26, 1863.  Pennypacker returned to studying law at the University of Pennsylvania, ...

Simon Snyder was the third Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, serving three terms from 1808 to 1817. A Jeffersonian Democrat, he also served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and was elected three times as Speaker in 1804, 1805, and 1807. Born in Lancaster on November 5, 1759, the politician started his business career as an ...

Stewart Winfield Herman, Jr., Lutheran pastor, Foreign Service worker, OSS Operative, first Lutheran World Federation Director of Refugee Services, and seminary president. Stewart W. Herman Jr. was born in 1909 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A graduate of Gettysburg College and the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, Herman pursued graduate work in Europe in 1934. While there ...

Thomas Mifflin was born January 10, 1744 in Philadelphia.  He began his career as a merchant, but then entered the Provisional Assembly of Pennsylvania from 1772–1776.  He also served as a delegate to the Continental Congress from 1774–1775, but left to join the Continental Army after the start of the Revolutionary War.  Although Mifflin came ...

William Alfred Passavant (1821-1894) was the zealous home missionary who became the great 19th century pioneer in social services among American Lutherans. Born in Zelienople, Pennsylvania, Passavant was for decades involved in forming synods and establishing congregations. But his heart went out to the poor and suffering of the communities in which he worked, largely in ...