"James-Francis-Shober" (1853-1889)

Earned his degree at the University of  North Carolina in 1851 and was a co-founder of the first Sunday School in the state.Meanwhile his mama,Betsy Ann Waugh,was a mulatto slave who was only eighteen years old when James was born.Betsy,who lived in Salem,passed away in 1859 when James was between the age of six & seven.He was sent back to the Waugh Plantation near Waughton,North Carolina,where his grandma lived with other family members.

It is unclear how James obtained schooling when he was a child.In 1875,at the age of  22,he graduated second in his class,with a grade average 95.5,from 
Lincoln University,in Oxford,Pennsylvania.He received an A.B. degree.James 
then enrolled in Howard University school of medicine in Washington,D.C. 
where he was one of  forty-eight graduates in 1878.

There were only a handful of licensed African-American doctors across the United States following  the Civil War.James now joined those ranks in 1878 and became the first professionally trained African-American physician in 
North Carolina,then the largest city in the state.
Wilmington also had a sizeable African-American population.

James married Anna Maria Taylor of  Wilmington on June 28,1881,and the 
couple later became parents of Mary Louise & Emily Lillian,both of whom 
went on to graduate from Fisk University in Nashville Tennessee.Ann Marie 
Taylor Shober was an educator who taught at the Peabody School in 
Wilmington.

James passed away at the age of  thirty-six and is buried in Pine Forest,Cemetery,Wilmington.He was survived by his wife and daughters.