Even in defeat, Colonel John Stevens III set milestones. In 1808, the lawyer, soldier, engineer, inventor, botanist, and forefather of what we now call Hoboken launched the Phoenix, a steamboat of his own design, with plans to ferry passengers between New York City and New Brunswick, N.J.
Unfortunately for Stevens, New York State had already granted a monopoly on steamboat service in New York Bay to his brother-in-law Robert R. Livingston, the former chancellor of New York and a legendary founding father in his own right. Over a century before the rise of the Port Authority, the might of New York transportation muscle had claimed its first victim.
Stevens relented, dispatching his son in 1809 to captain the Phoenix around Cape May to Philadelphia, in what would become the first open sea voyage ever by a steamboat.
The landmark is just one of the many achievements credited to Stevens’ clan of endless tinkerers, who set up shop on Castle Point in Hoboken in 1784. This Sunday, the family will again be in the spotlight when the Hoboken Historical Museum debuts “The Extraordinary Stevens Family, A New Jersey Legacy: 1776-1911,” its spring 2015 exhibition.
The Stevens show will run from Jan. 25 until July 5 in the main gallery of the museum, located at 1301 Hudson St. A free opening reception will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 25.
Masters of steam
Having acquitted himself well as a colonel and the state treasurer of New Jersey during the Revolutionary War—his alleged money chest is on display at the museum – John Stevens III purchased the farm of a fled Tory on the island of Hoebuck for $90,000 and set about building Hoboken and the modern world it would inhabit.
Along with his son Robert Livingston Stevens, the Colonel was obsessed with the possibilities of steam power, then a nascent technology in the United Kingdom. In 1804, they launched the first-ever twin screw propeller steamboat, the Little Juliana. So keen was Stevens to protect his inventions that he lobbied Congress to pass its first patent law in 1790, and received one of the first U.S. patents for a steam engine.
In 1811, Stevens launched the first steam ferry between Hoboken and Manhattan. After this service was shuttered due to pressure from Livingston, Stevens switched focus to steam railroads, and in 1815 obtained the first railroad charter in U.S. history. In 1826, he demonstrated the first working steam locomotive in America, on a half-mile circular track in Hoboken.
But it was Robert L. Stevens, the Colonel’s second son, who had perhaps the most lasting impact on our modern mechanical world. The t-shaped rail and spike he invented for the Camden and Amboy Railroad, a segment of which is on display at the Museum, remains the industry standard to this day.
Preserving the legacy
Despite their many accomplishments, John Stevens III and his family enjoy little of the modern cachet afforded to contemporaries like Jefferson, Hamilton, Burr, and even Robert Livingston.
“They didn’t get the credit they were really due,” said Leah Loscutoff, the archivist at Stevens Institute of Technology and guest curator of the Hoboken Historical Museum exhibit. “Early American history books do mention the Stevens frequently, but somehow their name gets a little bit dropped off over the years.”
Part of the reason, says Loscutoff, was the Stevens’ self-sufficient wealth, which allowed them to eschew more well-known benefactors and associates. But more fundamentally, the Colonel’s clan never sought laurels. “They were doing this because they were genuinely very interested in improving transportation,” said Loscutoff. “They didn’t really seek out any kind of public notice.”
In terms of preserving their legacy, the best move the Stevens family ever made was founding the Stevens Institute of Technology. Colonel Stevens’ sixth son Edwin Augustus bequeathed $650,000 to open an “institution of learning” on Castle Point in 1868.
Now a leading American school of science and engineering, the college maintains the largest collection of Stevens family artifacts in existence under Loscutoff’s care in its Samuel C. Williams Library. The vast majority of the objects and papers on display in the museum this year come from that collection.
The new exhibit gives modern residents a chance to see Hoboken in its natural form, before its dissection by the street grid that lasts to this day. Three paintings by Thomas Whitley and Jasper Cropsey reveal Hoboken’s “Elysian fields” as the Stevens family saw it, impossibly verdant and bustling with pleasure seekers. Loscutoff said the paintings may have never been displayed to the public before.
The exhibit is also designed to give visitors a sense of what daily life might have been like for the Stevens.
“We really wanted some more personal items…trinkets that they used while they were alive or had in their home when they were living here,” said Loscutoff.
Items preserved from Stevens Castle, the family mansion that stood on the precipice of Castle Point until 1959, include an ornate wooden writing desk, crested pillow case, glasses, and a mantle clock.
The Stevens Family exhibition will be accompanied by a seven-part Sunday lecture series, including a bus tour of the family’s architectural heritage in Hoboken on April 4. The first installment, “How Should We Remember the Stevens Family?” will be delivered by Dr. Lee Vinsel, a professor of science and technology history at the Stevens Institute, on Feb. 15 at 4 p.m.
Loscutoff will give a tour of the Stevens Family Collections at the Samuel C. Williams Library on March 15 at 2 p.m. According to her, only a fourth of the collections will be on display at the museum.
The exhibit and lecture series are made possible through the support of the Stevens Institute of Technology, The Applied Companies, John Wiley & Sons, Bijou Properties, the Rockefeller Group, and the New Jersey Historical Commission.
The Hoboken Historical Museum is open six days a week, 2 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday through Thursday, 1 to 5 p.m. on Fridays, and noon to 5 p.m. on weekends. Admission is $3.