From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William Christian (c. 1743 – 9 April 1786) was a soldier and politician from Virginia who served in the era of the American Revolution.

Christian was born in Staunton, Virginia, a descendant of a Manx family which had settled in Ireland. His parents, Israel and Elizabeth (Stark) Christian, had emigrated to Virginia in 1740, where they ran a general store. At about the age of 20, William served as a captain in the Anglo-Cherokee War under Colonel William Byrd. In the mid 1760s, he worked in the law office of Patrick Henry, and married Henry's sister Anne.

Christian resided in Botetourt County, Virginia and then Fincastle County, Virginia. He represented Fincastle County in the lower house of the Virginia Assembly for three sessions, from 1773 to 1775. In 1774, he commanded a regiment of militia from Fincastle County in Dunmore's War, but he and his troops arrived too late to participate in the decisive Battle of Point Pleasant.

In 1775, with the approach of the American Revolutionary War, Christian served on the Fincastle Committee of Safety, and attended the March 20 and July 17 meetings of the Virginia Conventions. On 13 February 1776, he was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the 1st Virginia Regiment of the Continental Army, and was promoted to colonel in March. When Cherokees under Dragging Canoe and Oconostota went to war with Virginia in 1776, Christian resigned his commission in July 1776 and accepted a commission as colonel of militia from the Virginia Council of Defense. Christian led an expedition against the Cherokees which saw little action but compelled some of the chiefs to agree to peace. He served as a commissioner which negotiated the Treaty of Long Island with the Cherokees, which was signed on 20 July 1777. He was a commissioner in a second treaty with the Cherokees in 1781.

After the Revolution, in 1785 Christian moved his family to the neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky where he had claims to 9,000 acres (36 km²) of land. He was killed in southern Indiana the next year in a battle with the Wabash Indians. He is buried in Jefferson County, Kentucky. Several places are named after him, including Christian County, Illinois; Christian County, Kentucky; and Christian County, Missouri.

• McCormick, Thomas Denton. "William Christian" in the Dictionary of American Biography, vol. III, p. 96, edited by Dumas Malone. New York: Scribner's, 1936; revised 1964.

• Historical marker in Jefferson County, Kentucky
• Historical marker in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, noting that Christian County was named for him in 1797.
• Find-A-Grave profile for William Christian, which contains a supposed photograph of Christian, although he died decades before the invention of photography.