Langdon Taylor Christian (26 May 1853–13 November 1935), funeral director, was born in New Kent County and was the son of William Edmund Christian, a farmer, and Ann E. Taylor Christian. When he was five, his family moved to a farm in Charles City County. Orphaned by the deaths of his mother in 1863 and his father two years later, Christian received abbreviated formal schooling of only four months. After laboring on a farm in Charles City County, he moved to Richmond in 1870 and found employment with Scott and Clarke, a tobacco-stemming factory. Two years later he went to work for John A. Belvin, a lumber and furniture dealer. Like many other cabinetmakers, Belvin also provided undertaker services. Christian mastered this trade and after Belvin's death in 1880 took over his funeral business. On 5 October 1881 Christian married Belle Beverley Brown, daughter of a Fredericksburg merchant. They had one daughter and one son.
Christian entered the funeral business at a time of transformation. From a sideline performed by undertakers who often did not preserve the deceased's body or take steps to stop the spread of disease, preparing the dead for burial evolved into a commercial enterprise carried out by funeral directors performing arterial embalming in handsomely appointed parlors and fully equipped offices. As part of this transition, a part-time sideline of barbers, furniture dealers, and livery stable proprietors became a full-time specialized profession requiring education and regulation. In June 1883 Christian traveled to Cincinnati to attend the organizational meeting of the National Funeral Directors Association.
Moving to the forefront of Virginia efforts to professionalize and standardize his industry, Christian joined four colleagues in calling a meeting of all white undertakers in Virginia on 20 September 1887 for the purpose of forming a state professional organization. At the initial meeting of the Undertakers of Virginia (soon thereafter renamed the Virginia Funeral Directors Association), Christian was elected secretary and served in that office until his retirement in 1920. At the association's annual meeting in 1893, he served on a three-man committee that drafted legislation requiring the state licensing of funeral directors. In response to such calls for regulation within the funeral industry, the next session of the General Assembly created a five-member State Board of Embalming of Virginia, on which Christian served as secretary from its first meeting in July 1894 until his death. He was the fourth Virginia funeral director and the first Richmonder to be licensed by the board.
Christian earned national recognition among his professional colleagues. He was unanimously elected first vice president of the National Funeral Directors Association for the 1904–1905 term and defeated an opponent to win election as president for the 1905–1906 term. Christian also served as president of the Joint Conference of Embalmers Examining Boards and State Boards of Health (later the International Conference of Funeral Service Examining Boards, Inc.) from 1907 through 1908. Among his particular national concerns was the regulation of the transportation of human remains by public carriers. Christian called for greater cooperation among funeral directors in the United States and Canada and to increase the standing of his profession urged his colleagues to disassociate themselves from fraternal burial societies. He also condemned the insensitivity of manufacturers of embalming chemicals and apparatus who advertised with photographs of their clients' preserved bodies.
A Democrat, Christian represented Jefferson Ward on Richmond's common council from 1888 through 1891 and Madison Ward on the board of aldermen from 1914 through 1917. He was one of five delegates representing the city of Richmond in the House of Delegates for the long 1901–1904 term. He served on the Committees on Counties, Cities, and Towns, on Executive Expenditures, and on Manufactures and Mechanic Arts. Early in 1903 Christian successfully lobbied to reenact the 1894 legislation establishing the State Board of Embalming with an amendment making it illegal to embalm a corpse when foul play was suspected without first securing the coroner's permission.
Known in Richmond as Major Christian, he was especially proud of his twenty-six years of service in the state militia. After enlisting in 1872 in the 1st Regiment Virginia Infantry, he became quartermaster with the rank of first lieutenant of the 1st Battalion Cavalry in 1887 and was elected captain of the Walker Light Guard, 1st Regiment, three years later. He was appointed assistant inspector general of the 1st Brigade, Virginia Volunteers, with the rank of major, on 25 February 1895 and retired on 16 April 1898. An avid outdoorsman, Christian enjoyed hunting and fishing, avocations that led him into organized efforts to protect migratory birds and other wildlife. As a high-ranking Freemason he joined many Masonic relief charities and was a longtime president of the governing board of the Masonic Home of Virginia.
L. T. Christian Funeral Home flourished and in October 1921 relocated from downtown Richmond to larger offices in the burgeoning western part of the city. Christian's namesake son (1893–1975) succeeded him as director of the family business and served as president of the Virginia Funeral Directors Association for the 1940–1941 term. Christian's wife died on 12 January 1928. Three months later, on 19 April 1928, he married the twice-widowed Catherine Emerson DuBose Wallace, a New Orleans native. They had no children. She died of uterine and bladder cancer on 2 October 1935, and a few weeks later, after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage, Langdon Taylor Christian died at his Richmond home on 13 November 1935. He was buried in Hollywood Cemetery.
Sources Consulted:
Biographies in Lyon Gardiner Tyler, ed., Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography (1915), 4:247–249, and Philip Alexander Bruce, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, and Richard L. Morton, History of Virginia (1924), 4:85–86 (portrait facing 85); Marriage Register, Richmond City (1881, 1928), Bureau of Vital Statistics (BVS), Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia (LVA); L. T. Christian Funeral Home Records, Acc. 34483, LVA; Virginia Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers Minutes, Acc. 32559, Record Group 37, LVA; Virginia Funeral Directors' Association Proceedings (1893), 12–14, 31–32; presidential election and address in National Funeral Directors Association Proceedings (1905), 165–166, 172–173; [L. T. Christian], Golden Anniversary, 1880, 1930 (1930), portraits; Gladys B. Clem, Seventy-Five Years of the Virginia Funeral Directors Association (1963); Joann Peery McElmurray, A Journey—From Then to Now: The History of the Virginia Funeral Directors Association, 1888–1988 [1988]; BVS Death Certificate, Richmond City; obituaries in Richmond News Leader, 13 Nov. 1935, and Richmond Times-Dispatch, 14 Nov. 1935.
Photograph in History of Virginia, vol. 4.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Sara B. Bearss.
How to cite this page:
Sara B. Bearss, "Langdon Taylor Christian (1853–1935)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2006 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Christian_Langdon_Taylor, accessed [today's date]).
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