John Austin Stevens

John Austin Stevens (1827-1910) began as a bank cashier, built a trading business with Cuba, and served as an officer of the New York Chamber of Commerce, where during the Civil War he helped the Lincoln administration raise regiments and arrange financing. Denied membership in the Society of the Cincinnati under its rules of primogeniture, he founded the Sons of the Revolution in 1876, open to any descendant of a revolutionary ancestor, and served as its first president. He helped launch The Magazine of American History in 1877 and edited it through 1881, contributing to it for years afterward. His life of Gallatin was his volume in Houghton Mifflin's American Statesmen series.