E. A. Stephenson

A. Stephenson, the well-known and popular chief engineer of the Tacoma building, Chicago, was born in that city in 1851, a son of Peter and Caroline Stephenson. The father was born and reared in Sweden, and in 1850 became a resident of Chicago, where, as a machinist, he worked in the Illinois Central shops for over thirty years. He died in Chicago in 1893, at the ripe old age of eighty-three years, and his wife passed away in 1892.

The subject of this review grew to manhood and was educated in Chicago and learned the machinist's trade, serving his apprenticeship in the Vulcan Iron Works, and on the expiration of his apprenticeship entered the employ of the Babcock Manufacturing Company, on Des Plaines street, remaining with them five years, and for the next two years was engineer for the National Elevator Company. In 1871 he began sailing out of Chicago as engineer on the tug Alpha, which he fitted up and brought out new for the Chicago Docking and Dredging Company, and on which he went the entire season. The following three seasons he was engineer on the propeller Peerless, engaged in the Lake Superior trade, and then entered the employ of the McCormick estate, being chief engineer of their building for nine years. In 1889, on the completion of the Tacoma building, he accepted his present position, which he has since so satisfactorily filled. He is a prominent member of the Stationary Engineers Association, also of Scranton Lodge No. 8, K. P., and the Engineers Club, which meets in the Fisher building.

In 1875, in Chicago, Mr. Stephenson war married to Miss Josephine Roddy, a native of that city, and to them have been born eight children, only two of whom are now living, George R. and Thomas.

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Volume I

This version of Volume II is based, with permission, on the work of the great volunteers at the Marine Captains Biographies site. To them goes the credit for reorganizing the content into some coherent order. The biographies in the original volume are in essentially random order.

Some of the transcription work was also done by Brendon Baillod, who maintains an excellent guide to Great Lakes Shipwreck Research.