Thomas William Luther Dosh (21 November 1830–24 December 1889), president of Roanoke College, was born in Strasburg, in Shenandoah County, and was the son of Ann W. Swan Dosh and William Dosh, a boot- and shoemaker who died while his son was young. Dosh attended a nearby school, worked in a printing office for a time, and taught school. With financial aid from the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Virginia, he entered Pennsylvania College (later Gettysburg College) in 1851 and graduated as valedictorian in 1856. Under the auspices of the American Sunday School Union, Dosh helped organize Sunday schools in rural Pennsylvania during summer breaks. He graduated from Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg in 1858 and briefly filled a vacancy at the Second English Lutheran Church, in Baltimore.

Once Dosh had received a license to preach, the Home Missionary Society of the Virginia Synod sent him to organize congregations in Preston, Taylor, and Tucker Counties. After being ordained in 1859, he founded the English Lutheran Church at Wheeling, where he remained as pastor until 1861. Dosh supported the Confederate cause in a region harboring strong Unionist ties, and on 24 May 1862 he accepted a call from Grace Lutheran Church, in Winchester. He married a member of his congregation, Catherine Baker Brown, on 3 November 1864. They had two sons and five daughters. Having shepherded his church through the Civil War and its aftermath, Dosh resigned on 1 January 1872 to become pastor of Saint John's Lutheran Church, in Charleston, South Carolina. He served there until 1876, when he became pastor of Saint John's Lutheran Church at Salisbury, North Carolina.

In October 1861 the Virginia Synod withdrew from the General Synod of the United States and in 1863 formed an association with synods in other Confederate states. Dosh was elected president at the annual meeting in 1866 when delegates changed the name of the General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Confederate States to the Evangelical Lutheran General Synod of North America. In 1871 he attended a meeting of churchmen to discuss creating a general conference for all Lutherans. When the southern synod held its convention at Staunton in 1876, Dosh reported from a committee formed to revise the Book of Worship and recommended working with other national synods to consider the adoption of uniform hymns and forms of public worship for all English-speaking Lutheran churches. Two years later the synod signaled its interest in reconciliation by changing its name to the Evangelical Lutheran General Synod South.

In 1874 Roanoke College, in Salem, awarded Dosh a doctorate of divinity. Three years later, on 24 March 1877, the board of trustees unanimously elected him as the school's second president and also named him professor of moral and intellectual philosophy. Inaugurated on 13 June of that year, Dosh agreed with the board's decision that month to strengthen Roanoke College's curriculum and to tighten enforcement of graduation requirements. Strictly observing school regulations, he approved of the faculty's insistence on compulsory church attendance on Sundays and the requirement that students report their attendance at the Monday chapel roll call. Two students refused and were expelled, and a large number of others protested that the rule infringed on their liberty. The board resolved the issue by recommending that other means be found for enforcing observance of the Sabbath.

Unruly students thwarted Dosh's vow to permit "none but scholars to go forth with the seal of our commendation." In October 1877 a student appeared before the faculty for defying Dosh's authority. In the ensuing months professors became the targets of disrespectful, even insubordinate, behavior. Students were sent home for drunkenness and, on one occasion, for firing pistols. To discourage disorder during chapel, students were assigned seating. When the senior class petitioned for permission to attend chapel at their option, Dosh refused. Viewing his disciplinary measures as tending to enhance rather than diminish tensions, many students became disaffected with his administration. In May 1878 the General Synod South offered Dosh a professorship at the Lutheran Theological Seminary (later Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary), then located in Salem. He resigned as president of Roanoke College effective 1 July of that year but remained a college trustee until 1889.

After returning to Virginia in 1877, Dosh resumed membership in the state synod and sat on various standing and special committees at its annual meetings, including in 1883 a committee that established a fund for disabled ministers. He also served as a delegate to conferences of the General Synod South and to other state synods. Dosh coedited and published the Lutheran Visitor from 1874 to 1878 and edited the Lutheran Home from 1885 to 1886, after which he served as its associate editor until December 1888. He taught at the seminary in Salem until it moved in 1884, and in 1886 he accepted a pastorate at Burkittsville, in Frederick County, Maryland. In June 1888 he delivered a sermon to the graduating class of Roanoke College. Thomas William Luther Dosh died at his home in Burkittsville on 24 December 1889 and was buried at Mount Hebron Cemetery, in Winchester.

Sources Consulted:
Biographies in J. C. Jensson, American Lutheran Biographies… (1890), 173–174, and Peter Bergstresser, "A Biography of Rev. Thomas William Luther Dosh, D.D.," MS dated 23 Jan. 1891, Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg Archives, Gettysburg, Pa., printed in Quarterly Review of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, new ser., 21 (July 1891): 357–373; Winchester Marriage Bonds, Library of Virginia; published sermons include Dosh, "The Present Life," Lutheran Visitor 1 (1866): 25–30; Roanoke College Board of Trustees Minutes, Roanoke College Faculty Minutes, and Annual Minutes of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Virginia, all Roanoke College Archives, Roanoke, Va.; Roanoke Collegian 3 (Apr. 1877): 60, ibid. (June 1877): 1, 77 (quotation), ibid. 4 (June 1878): 74; William Edward Eisenberg, The First Hundred Years: Roanoke College, 1842–1942 (1942), esp. 143–148, 370–371; Eisenberg, The Lutheran Church in Virginia, 1717–1962… (1967), portrait on 189; Eisenberg, This Heritage: The Story of Lutheran Beginnings in the Lower Shenandoah Valley and of Grace Church, Winchester (2003 ed.), esp. 178–187; obituaries in Winchester Times, 1 Jan. 1890 (misdated 1889), and Roanoke Collegian 15 (1890): 42.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Donald W. Gunter.

How to cite this page:
Donald W. Gunter,"Thomas William Luther Dosh (1830–1889)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2105 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Dosh_Thomas_William_Luther, accessed [today's date]).

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