[PW] aeronaut Leo Stevens?/even more

[T. F. Mills]

I'm chiming in a little late on this question, so please excuse me if I restate some ground 
already covered or if I missed some significant details.

I think 27 Sep 1877 is the best bet for Leo Stevens' birthdate, but I agree from sources I have 
perused that there remains grounds for doubt.

Who's Who in Ballooning gives a nice bio sketch, including birthdate of 27 Sep 1877 
(Cleveland, Ohio) and death date of 8 May 1944 (Bardonia, NY).  Brother Frank's dates are 
given as "1874?-1940".  And according to this source, the subject's full name is "Albert Leo 
Stevens".
http://www.ballooninghistory.com/whoswho/who'swho-s2.html

Now here's a funny.  On his 1917 draft registration card, Stevens gives his full name as 
"Aeronaut Leo Stevens" (first name-middle name-last name), and his signature is the same.    
His occupation is given as "balloon expert".  And the birthdate is given as 27 Sep 1877.  
There is no mistaking it for 1871.   I am sending you a jpeg off-list.

Later parachuting medals bear the inscription "Aeronaut Leo Stevens", but I doubt people 
thought "Aeronaut" was his first name.  A draft registration card is a strange place for a joke, 
so I suppose it is possible that at some point Stevens legally changed his name to "Aeronaut" 
even though he went by "Leo", or alternately changed it from "Aeronaut" to "Albert".  Given 
his stunt career from an early age and stage names of "Prince Leo" and "Don Carlos", either 
possibility would not be terribly surprising.  Especially if  his parents were also performers, 
they may have named him "Aeronaut" and he couldn't help but live up to his cognomen.  
(We've seen worse:  Moon Unit Zappa?)

As for the veracity of the 1877 birthdate on the draft registration card, it is possible that he 
lied in order to appear younger (40 instead of as old as 46).  This may have had some impact 
on his Army rank and role in WWI.  He was commissioned a Major (with apparently no prior 
service at any rank) in order to be balloon and parachute instructor for the Army at Fort 
Omaha, Nebraska.  But I lean toward accepting this document as his true birthdate.  WWI 
draft registration cards are known to be off by a year on occasion, usually because the 
subject was not clear on his birth year (probably the age-old problem of calculating from zero 
or one), but a six-year discrepancy is highly unlikely.

You now have at least three sources giving his birthdate as 27 Sep 1877, one of them  
primary.  (Primary sources almost always trump secondary, but one also has to apply a good 
dose of detective logic.)

The same bio sketch above which gives an 1877 birthdate, cites his first balloon ascent as 
"1885 (solo, at age 12)".  If he was 12 in 1885, he would have been born about 1873.  That 
clandestine adventure is recounted in Cleveland Moffett's "Careers of Danger and Daring"  
which also gives his age as 12 (in the 1908 edition which you have seen at Google books) 
but no year for the event.  See especially p. 125ff.  If the 1908 edition contains significant 
revisions, such as updating Stevens' age to 30, then the 1877 birthdate still holds true.  If the 
1908 were not updated, and Stevens was about 30 for the writing of the 1898 edition, he 
would have been born ca. 1867-68.  That seems a bit off compared to all the other sources.  
Finding an account of the 1885 incident in a Cleveland newspaper may be worthwhile.  (And 
you know it happened on a Sunday, which narrows the search.)  Then again, 12 may be the 
correct age of his first flight, but 1885 could be the wrong year.  If he were 8 or 9 at the time 
of this escapade, one would think that his youth would be emphasized in the retelling (or 
maybe it is Moffett who found that to be too unbelievable).  Stevens was apparently well-
known as "Prince Leo" by age ten, and it may be that first balloon flight that gave him the 
reputation.

Leo Stevens' wife in 1917-20 was Julia, also born about 1877.  Source: draft registration and 
1920 census, but these documents do not reveal when they married.  If the "A. Leo Stevens" 
that Sue found in the 1930 census is the same guy despite the age discrepancy (and the 
location suggests he is), his wife then is Laura, married in 1922, born about 1902 (i.e. at least 
twenty years younger than Leo).  According to the 1930 census he is now born about 1882, 
but it is possible he is lying about his age so as to appear not MORE than 20 years older than 
his wife, i.e. old enough to be her father (not so much for the benefit of the census-taker, but 
consistent with the story he may have been telling everybody).  In those pre-electronic days, it 
was quite easy to get away with lying about many things, and the pressure to be socially 
"respectable" was much stronger.  If he were actually born as early as 1867, that would make 
him 35 years older than his wife.  The further back we move his birthdate from 1877, the less 
probable it becomes.

>From Cuyahoga County (i.e. Cleveland) birth records, it would appear that neither Frank nor 
Leo were born before 1874.  Genealogists have transcribed pre-1874 records, and the 
Stevens brothers are not there.   See:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ohcuyah2/births/volume1/pg0046.html

If Leo Stevens could be found in the 1900 census, it would fairly reliably give the month and 
year of his birth.  That is one of the beauties of the 1900 census, and at a presumed age of 
23 (assuming 1877 birth), Stevens would less likely be pretending to be six years older.   I 
have tried all sorts of creative searches and cannot find him, Frank, parents, or wives in the 
1880, 1900 or 1910 censuses.  (1890 no longer exists.) The 1880 census especially would 
not mistake a 3-year-old for a 9-year-old.  If you have more info on his parents (father's 
name, birth years, birth places) or out-of-household experience, I can try again.  (Or you can 
try if you have access to ancestry.com.)  It is worth noting that the  Moffett account of Leo's 
1885 adventure suggests he was then living at home with his parents in Cleveland.

More stuff of interest:

LC has a pilot project to put old photos on Flickr.  Here is one of Leo Stevens that most 
searches will not turn up (unless you try "Prince Leo" or "L. Stevens"):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2162732173/in/set-72157603624867509/

Smithsonian also has a Stevens glass plate photo collection: 
http://siris-archives.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?uri=full=3100001~!226863!0#f ocus 
Of interest, they have catalogued him as "Stevens, Albert Leo, 1873-1944".

Stevens is buried in Fly Creek Valley Cemetery, where his tombstone inscription reads: "A. 
Leo Stevens, Aeronaut".  
See: http://www.fcahs.org/pdf/flycreeker-2006-winter.pdf 

As they say, hth,  


T.F. Mills                            (Colorado, USA)
temporary email:         phasco at earthlink.net
(pending resurrection of regiments.org mail)