James Christian, one of the five founders of the Manx Society at Cleveland.

The society was formed in 1851 by five men with characteristically Manx names, Christian among them with John Corlett, William K. Corlett, William Cubbon and William Brew. Its purpose was to assist and take care of the poor immigrant from the Isle of Man who arrived with an empty pocket or in feeble health, and it holds an honoured place among the pioneer bodies of its kind in America.

The settlement it served was a generation old by then. The first Manx families reached the Cleveland district in 1826, and about seventy families, some two hundred people, followed into Ohio in 1827. Christian was not among the most characteristic of the Ohio Manx surnames, which ran to Crellin, Shimmin, Kaighin, Cowley, Collister, Gelling, Kermeen, Monier, Mylchreest, Carran, Kewley, Lewin, Bridson, Crow, Killip, Cain, Corkill, Looney, Clucas and Kneen.