Edwin Augustus Stevens

Edwin Augustus Stevens (July 28, 1795 – August 7, 1868) was an American engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur who left a bequest that was used to establish the Stevens Institute of Technology.

Life Stevens was born at Castle Point, Hoboken, New Jersey, the son of Colonel John Stevens III (1749–1838) and his wife Rachel (née Cox) Stevens (1761–1839). He was the sixth of eleven children, and among his older brothers were John Cox Stevens and Robert Livingston Stevens.

Following the death of Colonel Stevens in 1838, Edwin and his brother Robert worked on a commission from the United States government to construct the nation's first ironclad naval vessel. After conducting tests to determine the amount of armor a vessel needed to defend itself against naval guns, the two brothers constructed a huge vessel known as the Stevens Battery. Though the craft was never fully completed, it nevertheless laid the groundwork for the modern armored warship. A scaled-down version, the USRC Naugatuck, saw limited action in the Civil War. After the war, the Naugatuck and the Battery were sold for scrap.

John Stevens IV (1856-1895), father of Mary Picton Stevens Hammond, who perished in the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. and grandfather of Millicent Fenwick Edwin Augustus Stevens, Jr. (1858–1918), who married Emily Contee Lewis (1857–1931), the great-granddaughter of Lawrence Lewis, George Washington's nephew, and Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis, Washington's adopted daughter and step-granddaughter. Caroline Bayard Stevens (1859-1932), who married Archibald Alexander and then H. Otto Wittpenn Julia Augusta Stevens (1863-1870) Robert Livingston Stevens II (1864-1907), who married Mary Stuart Whitney, great-grand daughter of Stephen Whitney. They were the parents of Robert Livingston Stevens (1907-1972) who was the second husband of Grace Vanderbilt, daughter of Cornelius III and Grace Graham Vanderbilt. Charles Albert Stevens (1865-1901) Richard Stevens (1868–1919), a Columbia College and Columbia Law School graduate who served as president of the Hoboken Land and Improvement Company.

Stevens died in Paris, France on August 7, 1868.

Legacy In Stevens's will, he left the bulk of his fortune to his wife and children, but also donated land adjoining the Stevens family estate, as well as $150,000 for the erection of a building and $500,000 as an endowment for the establishment of an "institution of learning". Because of the Stevens family's close ties with engineering, the will's executors decided it would be an institution devoted to the "mechanical arts". This institution became Stevens Institute of Technology, which opened its doors in 1870.

The university has since expanded to an entire hilltop campus overlooking Manhattan, and the original building funded by Stevens's bequest, which was renamed Edwin A. Stevens Hall, continues to house much of the School of Engineering, the oldest of the university's four schools.