On April 1, 1789, the first U.S. House of Representatives, meeting in New York City, reaches quorum and elects Pennsylvania Representative Frederick Augustus Conrad Muhlenberg as its first speaker.
Muhlenberg, a Lutheran minister and the former president of the Pennsylvania convention to ratify the U.S. Constitution, was the son of Henry Augustus Muhlenberg and grandson of Johann Conrad Weiser, two of the leading Germans in colonial Pennsylvania. His brother, Major General John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg, also served in the first House of Representatives.
Like his father, Frederick Muhlenberg studied theology at Germany’s University of Halle. He returned to Pennsylvania to be ordained in 1770 at the age of 20 and preached in Stouchsburg…
