Frank Stephens was a field naturalist and self-taught biologist who was active in the southwestern United States. He was born April 2, 1849 in a log cabin on a farm near Portage, Livingston County, NY to Nelson and Julia Stephens.
His family moved to Michigan when he was 13, and his schooling finished shortly thereafter because his help was needed with farm work during and after the Civil War. In 1871, the family moved to Illinois where Stevens took up taxidermy at the age of 22.
In 1873, at the age of 24 he married and moved to Kansas, and soon thereafter continued his move west in a mule-drawn wagon. During a winter spent in Colorado Springs, Colorado ornithologist Charles Aiken taught Stevens how to make better bird skins. He and his wife moved about between New Mexico, Arizona and California. In the summer of 1876, Apache stole their horses, but Stephens had purchased oxen and they continued to move to California where they settled in Witch Creek, San Diego County.
In 1883 he joined the American Ornithologists’ Union as an associate and became a member in 1901.
In 1891 he was a collector for the Death Valley Expedition and later sold specimens to the U. S. Biological Survey.
He joined the Cooper Ornithological Club in 1894.
In 1897 Stephens and his wife moved to San Diego, where he remained the rest of his life. His wife died in January 1898, and in August 1898 he remarried.
Stephens is listed in the 1898 Naturalist’s Directory as being interested in “mammals, ornithology, oology and has a collection.”
In 1910 he joined Joseph Grinnell (American field biologist & zoologist) on a Colorado River Expedition. He was a moving force behind the formation of a museum in San Diego, and in 1910 he donated his collections to the San Diego Society of Natural History.
In 1916 Stephens became one of the first three directors of the San Diego Zoo.
In 1934 at age 85 he retired from the museum with the title of Curator Emeritus.
During his long career, he collected at least 45 type specimens, 14 birds and 26 mammals and 5 insects, and authored more than two dozen articles in the Condor.
The Fox Sparrow, Passerella iliaca stephensi and the Stephens Kangaroo Rat, Dipodomys stephensi are named in his honor.
In September 1937, Frank Stephens was struck by a street car while crossing the street and died ten days later on October 5, 1937.
Retrieved from Islapedia.com and Wikipedia.com
Portrait – Photographer is unknown. – https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/131905#page/410/mode/1up [photo accompanying article “Frank Stephens – An Autobiography,” The Condor 20(5), 1918]
