[3] As a young man, Langhorne served briefly in the Confederate Army before being discharged for disability in October 1861.

Soon after the Civil War, he moved to Danville, Virginia, a major center for bright leaf tobacco.

It is said that Langhorne originated the auctioneer's fast-talking "chant," which proved very effective at evoking a heightened sense of bidding, and was also copied everywhere.

[5] In 1864, while the Civil War was still in progress, Langhorne married sixteen-year-old Nancy Witcher "Nanaire" Keene (1848–1903).

By 1892, he had installed his family at Mirador, a colonnaded house in Albemarle County, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains.