Larkin H. Walden was born in approximately 1830 in Tennessee. During the Civil War he served in Company I, 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. He came to Champaign in approximately 1865 and worked as a laborer. Walden lived at 606 East Springfield Avenue and was one of the founders of Bethel AME Church. He died on 24 May 1900 of rheumatism and an abscess of the spine and is buried in Mt. Hope Cemetery, Urbana.