According to his pension application S-41,188, James Stephenson was born in 1757 or 1758. His find-a-grave memorial posted online indicates Stephenson’s birth date as 6 May 1755. Pension testimony indicates that Stephenson entered the Continental Navy brig Andrew Doria, by then under the command of Captain Isaiah Robinson, at Philadelphia on 19 April 1777. According to his testimony, Stephenson served on the vessel until the middle of November when she was burnt to avoid falling into British hands. The veteran indicates that he was then sent in December to Baltimore and shipped on board the frigate Virginia under the command of Captain Samuel Nicholson and Lieutenant Joshua Barney until the vessel was captured in April 1778, actually on 31 March 1778. According to the muster roll of HMS St. Albans (ADM 36/7857), James Stephenson was one of the sixty-one officers and men conveyed to New York on that vessel and was entered on the roll of the prison ship Thunder Bomb on 27 April 1778. Stephenson testifies in his pension application that he was confined on the prison ship Thunder Bomb until 1779, when he was released and went ashore at Paulus Hook, present day Jersey City. A different and less likely version of his release in the pension record suggests he was confined until the Treaty of Paris was signed in February 1783, which actually occurred on 3 September 1783. In his 1818 testimony, James Stephenson indicates that he owns a fifteen acre farm in Fermanagh Township in Mifflin County and that his occupation was a taylor. His wife Sarah is noted as 52 years old (born about 1766), oldest daughter Susanna as 21 (born about 1797), middle daughter Sarah as 18 (born about 1800) and youngest daughter Mary Ann as 10 (born about 1808). Daughter Susanna is noted as “hired out for her support.”
James Stephenson was probably already living in the Mifflintown area when his oldest daughter was born as evidenced by his witnessing of a will written on 17 June 1799 by Hugh McCormick, likely a neighbor and friend. McCormick and his wife Catherine had just recently in October 1798 sold their farm in Fermanagh Township in anticipation of relocating with their family to Scott County, Kentucky. Things did not work out so well for Hugh there as his will was probated in October 1799. Life in the Mifflintown locale in those early years is described in William Henry Egle’s book Pennsylvania Genealogies: Scotch-Irish and German (1886). “William, Hugh, and Robert McCormick were among the first settlers and land-owners within the present limits of Juniata County, Pa. They and their brother Thomas, took out warrants in 1755, for a tract of land located two miles north of Mifflintown, along the Juniata River in Fermanagh Township, and the three first-named settled thereon, about that time…On several occasions they were driven out by the Indians, the last being in 1786, when they fled for refuge to Huntingdon County. They returned home in 1787, and immediately thereafter Hugh McCormick erected a large stone house on his property, which it is said was built partly with the view of using it as a fort in case of another Indian raid, the windows being made high and narrow. This house is yet standing [in 1886], apparently, without a flaw or seam in its walls. The brothers are described as being very large and robust men, fond of frontier life, and in every way suited to its dangers and excitements…Hugh served in the War for Independence, and Mrs. Catharine Laird, a granddaughter, says of him: “Grandfather Hugh McCormick lived at the beginning of the Revolutionary war on the Juniata River. Grandmother said that when he came home from the war he was covered with rags. In his knapsack he had only a conch shell, which she kept until her death, and gave to our mother to be handed down as a memento of his service.”
James Stephenson appears to be an attender of the Mifflintown and Lost Creek [Presbyterian] Congregation as the records show all three adult daughters joining the church as communicant members by examination of faith under the pastorate of the Reverend John Hutchinson, who ministered to the two congregations from 1805 until his death in 1844. Originally dating to 1759 and known as Cedar Spring Presbyterian Church, the fellowship expanded and worshipped at two meeting houses about eight miles apart while sharing a minister. Lost Creek Presbyterian Church was organized in the town of McAlisterville, while the Mifflintown Presbyterian Church remained in Mifflintown. During this time Susanna Stephenson was received as a communicant member in 1820, Sarah or Sally in May 1824 and Mary in May 1828. All the girls may have also been baptized in the church whose records date to 1806, however only Mary Ann’s baptism is recorded for 27 September 1807. From observation of her grave marker, the sisters’ mother Sarah Stephenson appears to have died and been buried in the church’s burying ground in 1822, one year before the eldest Susanna was married to John Anderson by the Rev. Hutchinson on 27 November 1823 with the infrequent notation of “gratis” in the church records. The youngest daughter Mary Ann was married to M. William Horning by Hutchinson on 13 May 1834. No record of the marriage of middle daughter Sarah, or Sally, has yet been located. It is assumed that their father James Stephenson likely moved into the household of one of his two married daughters in the years immediately preceding his death. Both his pension records and his find-a-grave memorial concur that Continental Navy veteran James Stephenson died on 5 July 1838. He is buried in Westminster Presbyterian Cemetery at Mifflintown, Juniata County, PA and his cemetery marker can be viewed at: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/178778230/james-stevenson
James Stevenson appears to have left a will at the time of his death probated in Juniata County, which was formed out of neighboring Mifflin County in 1831 and named after the Juniata River which dominates the local geography.