William Christian was born about 1743 in Staunton, Virginia, United States, a descendant of a Manx family that had settled in Ireland. His parents, Israel and Elizabeth (Stark) Christian came to Virginia in 1740 and soon afterward opened a general store at Staunton.
William studied the law in the office of Patrick Henry.
Christian began his military career early and at the age of twenty he rose to the rank of captain in Colonel William Byrd’s regiment. After the war he resided successively in Botetourt and Fincastle counties, represented the latter in the lower house of the Virginia legislature in 1773, 1774, and 1775, and both counties in the state Senate during sessions of 1776 and 1780-1783. In 1775 he was a member of the Committee of Safety, a member of the conventions of March 20 and July 17, and a member of the committee named to provide plans for the execution of Patrick Henry’s famous resolutions of March 23, 1775.
During Dunmore’s War Christian commanded a regiment of Fincastle militia. He was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the 1st Virginia Regiment, Continental Line, on February 13, 1776, and on March 18 following he was promoted to the rank of colonel, a position he held until July, when he resigned and accepted a commission as colonel of militia from the Virginia Council of Defense on August 1, 1776, with orders to organize and lead a punitive expedition against the Cherokee Indians, whose raids, under the leadership of the chiefs Dragging Canoe and Ocono- stoga, had terrorized the settlements in the upper Holston and Wautaga river valleys.
Christian collected a force of about seventeen hundred militiamen from Virginia and North Carolina at Long (also called Great) Island, now Kingsport, on the Holston River, while the Indians retired beyond the French Broad River. The militia followed by the way of Chimney Top Mountain and Lick Creek to the French Broad, destroying crops and a few villages with a show of force that overawed the Indian leaders. Without giving battle, the Indians agreed to a truce which was to be followed by a “permanent” treaty of peace the next year. The army returned to Long Island, where they rebuilt Fort Robinson and renamed it Fort Patrick Henry, and then disbanded after a three months’ bloodless campaign. Christian received the official thanks of the governor and council and was appointed one of the three commissioners on the part of Virginia to negotiate the Cherokee treaty which was signed at Long Island July 20, 1777. In August 1785 he moved his family to Kentucky, where his Virginia land grants amounted to nine thousand acres, and located on Bear Grass Creek, near Louisville. The following year he was killed, near the present site of Jeffersonville, Indiana, while leading a pursuit party against marauding Wabash Indians.
Christian was married to Anne Henry.
