The Christian Family.

This family came from the Isle of Man, and as early as 1732 
Gilbert Christian, with his family, removed from Pennsylvania, 
where they lived in 1726, to a point near where Staunton, 
Virginia, now stands, and on a creek to which they gave their 
name. The family of Gilbert Christian, which consisted of 
himself, wife, three sons, John, Robert, William, and a
daughter, Mary, became near neighbors of the celebrated Lewis 
family.

Captain Israel Christian settled in the Valley in 1740, where 
he married Miss Elizabeth Starke; removing later to what is now 
Botetourt County, he gave the land for the town of Fincastle, 
and still later he came across the Alleghanies, and settled 
on the New River, near Ingles' Ferry. The town of Christainsburg 
was named from him. His son, Colonel William, was
born near Staunton, in 1743; he married Anne, a sister of 
Patrick Henry.

He was long a prominent figure of the border; representing the 
New River Valley district in the State Senate in 1781; was the 
Colonel and Commandant of the Fincastle troops, and led a 
regiment from that county to the battle of Point Pleasant, in 
October, 1774. Only two companies of his regiment participated 
in the battle; the remainder, with Colonel Christian were in 
charge of the supplies for the army of General Lewis. Colonel
Christian, with a few men, in pursuing a marauding band of 
Indians across the Ohio, was on the 9th day of April, 1786, 
killed on the spot whereon how stands Jeffersonville, Indiana.

A part of the same Christian family from near Staunton, in the 
Valley, settled on East River, in what is now Mercer County, in 
1780. Some of these people served with great distinction on the 
Confederate side in our Civil War.