SHOBER, Gottlieb, clergyman, born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1 November, 1756; died in Salem, South Carolina, 27 June, 1838. His parents removed when he was young to Bethabara, a Moravian settlement in the south, and gave him a common-school education. He taught for a few years, then learned the trade of a tinsmith, and began business in Salem, South Carolina, where he soon combined a bookstore with his tin-shop, became postmaster, and built the first paper-mill south of the Potomac. While an apprentice he had studied law, was admitted to the bar, and soon acquired an extensive practice among the German settlers. Later he became a large landowner, had numerous slaves, and was frequently elected to the legislature. After his fiftieth year he desired to enter the ministry, but, finding it impossible to take the long theological course that was required by the Moravian church, he induced the village authorities to make a change in their laws, which, being confirmed by the legislature, permitted another denomination within their borough. He then took a course of reading, and in 1811 was appointed by the Lutheran synod pastor at Salem. The indignant Moravians tried to compel him to leave the town, but he proved his right to remain by their own recent enactment, and labored there gratuitously till a few years before his death. He was a founder of the general synod of the Lutheran church, of which he was president in 1825, and one of the committee to prepare a Lutheran hymn-book, and to publish the translation of Luther's catechism. In 1825 he was a director of the theological institution which adopted measures for the formation of the seminary at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to which he left three thousand acres of land. He translated Stelling's "Scenes in the World of Spirits," and prepared "A Comprehensive Account of the Rise and Progress of the Christian Church by Dr. Martin Luther" (Baltimore, Maryland, 1818).