William Christian

William Christian ( 1742 – April 9, 1786) was a military officer, planter and politician from the western part of the Colony of Virginia. He represented Fincastle County in the House of Burgesses and as relations with Britain soured, signed the Fincastle Resolutions. He later represented western Virginia in the Virginia Senate and founded Fort William (now Louisville, Kentucky), as well as helped negotiate the Treaty of Long Island of the Holston, which made peace between the Overmountain Men and Cherokees in 1777. He was killed in 1786 at the outset of the Northwest Indian War, leading an expedition against Native Americans near what is now Jeffersonville, Indiana.

Early and family life Christian was born about 1742, in Augusta County, Virginia. He was the son of Elizabeth Starke and her husband Israel Christian, immigrants from Ireland who settled in Staunton, Virginia, in 1740, where they operated a general store. Israel Christian represented Augusta County in the Virginia House of Burgesses multiple times between 1758 and 1765, and helped found the towns of Christiansburg and Fincastle. William Christian and his sisters received an "unusually good" education, perhaps from their mother. In 1774, Christian 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.

As relations with Britain soured, Christian became one of the signers of the Fincastle Resolutions, the earliest statement of armed resistance to the British Crown in the American colonies. In 1775, as the American Revolutionary War neared, Christian served on the Fincastle Committee of Safety and was elected to represent the county at the first four of the five Virginia Conventions after Virginia's royal governor, Lord Dunmore, dismissed the legislature. After the fifth revolutionary convention established the Commonwealth of Virginia, voters from Botetourt and Fincastle counties elected Christian as their representative in the Virginia Senate. However, in the next session, the district boundaries changed, with Botetourt County joining Washington, Montgomery, Greenbrier and Kentucky counties in a district that elected William Fleming as their state senator for a four-year part time term. Christian soon returned, after yet another boundary change as settlers moved southwest along the Cumberland Road through Washington County and Greenbrier County into what was first Kentucky County, then Jefferson, Fayette, and Lincoln Counties—all before Kentucky became a state in its own right.

On February 13, 1776, he was appointed lieutenant colonel of the 1st Virginia Regiment. Christian's brother-in-law Patrick Henry was the initial colonel in command, but when the regiment was taken into the Continental Army, Henry declined to continue serving, and so Congress promoted Christian to colonel on March 18, 1776. As one of the most experienced military officers in Kentucky, in 1786 he led an expedition against Native Americans north of the Ohio River. He was killed in a skirmish on April 9, near present-day Jeffersonville, Indiana. Christian County, Missouri