Edwin Augustus Stevens - Early Life and Family

Early Life and Family

Stevens was born at Castle Point, Hoboken, New Jersey, the son of Colonel John Stevens III (1749-1838) and his wife Rachel Cox (1761-1839). He was the sixth of eleven children, and among his older brothers were John Cox Stevens and Robert Livingston Stevens. In 1836 he married Mary Barton Picton, daughter of Rev. Thomas Picton of Princeton, New Jersey. They had a daughter, Mary Picton Stevens (May 19, 1840 – September 21, 1903), who went on to marry Virginia politician Muscoe Russell Hunter Garnett and later Edward Parke Custis Lewis, U.S. minister to Portugal.

In 1854, after his first wife's death, Stevens married Martha Bayard Dod (May 15, 1831 – April 1, 1899). She was the daughter of Albert Baldwin Dod (1805-1845), professor of mathematics at Princeton University, and Caroline Smith Bayard, who was the daughter of Samuel Bayard (1766-1840) and granddaughter of Continental Congressman John Bubenheim Bayard (1738-1808). With Martha he had six children: John Stevens (b. July 1856), grandfather of Millicent Fenwick; Edwin Augustus Stevens Jr. (b. March 14, 1858); Caroline Bayard Stevens (b. November 21, 1859), who married Archibald Alexander and then H. Otto Wittpenn; Robert Livingston Stevens (b. August 26, 1864); Charles Albert Stevens (b. December 14, 1865); and Richard Stevens (b. May 1868).