In 1888, four Christians served simultaneously as judges in Virginia: Joseph Christian on the Supreme Court of Appeals, George L. Christian on the Husting Court of Richmond, J.H. Christian on the County Court of Charles City County, and Thomas Christian on the County Courts of Middlesex and Matthews Counties. Four hundred and eighty years after John McCristen had served as Deemster in 1408, the family was still doing the same work — adjudicating, interpreting law, serving their community from the bench. The transmission was not formal. What the family carried was subtler and harder to extinguish: an instinct for law as something local, known, carried in the memory of the community.