author
Bascom Asbury Cecil Stephens
1855–1913
A journalist, minister, historian, and energetic chronicler of family and frontier life, Bascom Asbury Cecil Stephens turned a lifetime of research into The Stephens Family. His work also explored the history, politics, and natural resources of Southern California, Arizona, and Baja California.
1 Audiobook
The Stephens family : a genealogy of the descendants of Joshua Stevens
by Bascom Asbury Cecil Stephens
About the author
Born in Lockington, Ohio, on March 5, 1855, Stephens later moved west and graduated from Santa Clara High School in California. He founded the Santa Clara Echo, entered the Seventh-day Adventist ministry in 1875, and was ordained in 1878. After leaving the ministry, he returned to journalism, working in California and Arizona and publishing newspapers including the Pomona Progress and the Daily Commercial.
Stephens settled in Los Angeles in 1882 and became closely involved in the region's historical and political life. He contributed to newspapers and magazines, served for three years as secretary of the Historical Society of Southern California, and wrote pamphlets and manuscripts on Southern California, Arizona, Baja California, and the proposed division of California.
His best-known work, The Stephens Family: A Genealogy of the Descendants of Joshua Stevens, was written in Los Angeles in 1892 and printed with additions in 1910. Drawing on family traditions, correspondence, local research, and visits to ancestral sites, the book preserves an extensive record of the Stephens family and its connections across the American West and Midwest. Stephens lived from 1855 to 1913.