HOFFMAN, John N., clergyman, born in Adams county, Pennsylvania, 16 January, 1804; died in Reading, Pennsylvania, 26 July, 1857. He studied theology under the Reverend Frederick D. Shaeffer, entered the ministry in 1825, and was pastor of Lutheran churches at Taneytown, Maryland, till 1831, and Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, till 1842. For the next eleven years he preached at Carlisle, and during that period held the office of president of the West Pennsylvania synod for three years. In 1853 he assumed charge of a church in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, and a few months later was called to Reading, where he remained till his death, he published a translation of Arndt's "True Christianity" (Chambersburg, 1834); a volume of" Evangelical Hymns, Original and Selected" (1838); "A Collection of Texts"; and "The Broken Platform, a Defence of the Symbolical Books of the Lutheran Church" (Philadelphia, 1856).