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William Steptoe Christian was born on December 26, 1830, in Middlesex County, the son of Elizabeth Robinson Steptoe Christian and Richard Allen Christian, a physician who in 1838 became a Baptist minister. His elder brother Joseph Christian served on the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. William Christian attended local preparatory schools and in 1848 received an AB from Columbian College (later George Washington University), in Washington, D.C. He graduated from Jefferson Medical College, in Philadelphia, in 1851 and returned to Middlesex County, where he began practicing medicine at Urbanna. On January 11, 1853, in Halifax County, North Carolina, Christian married Helen Elizabeth Steptoe, a cousin a few years older than he. They had two daughters and four sons, two of whom died in infancy, before her death on December 6, 1898. Christian married Alice Taylor Woodward, of Middlesex County, on July 10, 1900. They had no children.