He found the settlement distracted by social quarrels and jealousies, in which he acted the part of a mediator. He met with success, at first as a planter and fruit cultivator, and he was appointed secretary to the trustees in Georgia in April 1741. He was shortly afterwards made president of the county of Savannah, and of the entire colony in 1743. He held this post until 1750, when he gave such evidence of mental and physical decline that he was requested to resign. He was voted a pension of 80l., but appears to have sunk into poverty before his death, upon his plantation of Bewlie (named after Beaulieu in the New Forest), at the mouth of the Vernon River, in August 1753.
He married, in 1697, Mary, second daughter of Sir Richard Newdigate, bart., of Arbury, by Mary, daughter of Sir Edward Bagot. They had issue seven sons and two daughters. The eldest son, Thomas, was the author of a curious memoir of his father, entitled ‘The Castle-builder; or, the History of William Stephens of the Isle of Wight, Esq.’ (2nd ed. London, 1759, 8vo).
William Stephens was author of ‘A Journal of the Proceedings in Georgia, beginning October 20, 1737: to which is added a State of that Province, as attested upon Oath in the Court of Savannah, Nov. 10, 1740,’ 3 vols. London, 1742, 8vo. Of this work a limited edition was published by the trustees, and complete copies are very rare (the British Museum copy lacks the third volume). While encumbered with many trivial and irrelevant matters, the ‘Journal’ is remarkable for accuracy and minuteness of detail. Stephens also possessed some manuscript records of the colony, accumulated during his tenure of office as secretary, and these, having passed to his family, formed part of Sir Thomas Phillipps's library at Thirlestane House, Cheltenham (cf. H. Stevens, in Collections of the Georgia Hist. Society, i. 34).
[Graduati Cantabr.; Official Ret. of Members of Parliament; Winsor's History of America, v. 386, 395–7, 400; Appleton's Cyclop. of Amer. Biography; Woodward's Hampshire, vol. iii. Suppl. p. 56; Collins's English Baronetage, vol. iii. pt. ii. p. 626; Brit. Mus. Cat.]
STEPHENSON, GEORGE (1781–1848), inventor and founder of railways, second son of Robert Stephenson, fireman at the Wylam colliery, was born at Wylam, eight miles from Newcastle, on 9 June 1781. His mother, Mabel, was the daughter of Richard Carr, a dyer of Ovingham, and his paternal grandfather is said to have come from Scotland as a gentleman's servant. His father was a steady, honest workman, very fond of children, and with a great love for birds, a trait of his character inherited by his famous son.
Stephenson's first employment was herding cows; then he became a driver to the horses working the colliery gin, and at the age of fourteen was an assistant fireman to his father at the Dewley colliery. At fifteen he became fireman, and at seventeen ‘plugman,’ at the colliery where his father was fireman. While in this post, during his eighteenth year, he began to learn to read and write at a night school. In 1801 he became a brakesman at Black Callerton, lodging at a farmhouse close by. Anxious to increase his earnings, as he had formed an attachment for Frances Henderson, a servant at the farm, he took to mending boots in his leisure hours, and became very expert at the work.
On 28 Nov. 1802, when twenty-one years of age, he married Frances Henderson at Newburn church, and became engineman at Willington Ballast Hill. Here, owing to the experience gained in repairing his own clock, which had been damaged by a fire, he took up the work of cleaning and repairing clocks and watches, acquiring great skill at it. William (afterwards Sir W.) Fairbairn [q. v.], who was then working as an engineer's apprentice in the neighbourhood, became his intimate friend at this time.
On 16 Oct. 1803 his only son Robert was born, and in 1804 he removed to Killingworth, where his wife died of consumption on 14 May 1806. The greater part of the next year he spent at Montrose, looking after one of Boulton & Watt's engines. After his return his prospects seemed so gloomy that he seriously considered the wisdom of emigrating. During this period his father became incapable of active work; his parents therefore became a charge on his limited resources; he was also drawn for the militia, and had to find the money to pay for a substitute. In 1808 he took, with two other men, a contract to work the engines of the Killingworth pit. While there he took his engine to pieces every Saturday in order that he might become a thorough master of its construction. In consequence of the great skill he showed in putting in order a Newcomen engine which failed to do the pumping work it was designed for, he was in 1812 appointed engine-wright to the colliery at a salary of 100l. a year.
Meanwhile he again devoted much of his leisure to improving his scientific knowledge. He also converted his home at Killingworth into a comfortable four-roomed house, putting up a sundial in front of it, with the aid of his son.
