Peter Schmucker

Peter Schmucker (1784–1860) was a Lutheran and later Methodist minister, who served congregations first in Virginia, then in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other western states.

Johann Peter Schmucker, son of Johann Christoph and Anna Apollonia (Schoenberger) Schmucker, was born on 27 August 1784, in Reichelsheim, Grand Duchy of Hesse Darmstadt. He died on 9 December 1860.

Peter was an infant when his parents immigrated to the United States and settled near Woodstock, Shenandoah County, Virginia. Christoph, his father, was a farmer. Growing up Peter worked on the farm and then learned the carpenter's trade. When he was eighteen [1802-1803] "he experienced a change of heart, at a camp meeting held by the United Brethren." His parents were Lutherans and two of his older brothers, George and Nicholas, had devoted themselves early to the ministry. Peter after his "change of heart" took steps to enter the Lutheran ministry. In October 1814 Peter attended the next meeting of the North Carolina Synod and was licensed as a Candidate, the next step towards his ordination as a Lutheran pastor. Peter's labors were greatly blessed with awakenings and conversions, which at that time produced considerable persecution. He was denounced as a Methodist. At that same synod meeting the North Carolina Synod split. Some of the members of the synod felt it was straying from adherence to confessional Lutheranism and toward unionism. They left the North Carolina Synod and formed the Evangelical Lutheran Tennessee Synod that same year. Peter remained with the North Carolina Synod and was chosen as a delegate to a clerical assembly in Maryland that was meeting for the purpose of forming a General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the United States and he was one of those who signed the articles of the Constitution of the General Synod. Peter left Virginia moved to Pennsylvania and became a member the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Western Pennsylvania.

William Nast in Brother Schmucker's obituary wrote: [Brother Schmucker was] a man of such deep piety, long pastoral experience, general intelligence, sound Biblical theology, and pleasing and venerable address as brother S. possessed. He was a man of no ordinary intellect, had read much, and was "great in the Holy Scripture." His exposition of divine truth was clear, forcible, and full of unction. It may be truly said of him, as a minister, that he magnified his office. He was humble, yet dignified; mild and affable, yet quick to reprove sin. He was an excellent sermonizer, and the homiletical instructions which he gave as presiding elder to the young German preachers, who had not enjoyed a liberal education, were invaluable. With his theological erudition he combined a poetical genius. He wrote a great deal of sacred poetry, in English as well as German, of which he, however, published but little.