Strangers to Us All
Lawyers and Poetry

Garrett Barcalow Stevens

(1848- )
Pennsylvania

Garrett B. Stevens was a lawyer in Reading, Pennsylvania. He was born September 29, 1848 and was admitted to the bar in 1872. He practiced in Reading until 1911. Garrett Stevens was the father of Wallace Stevens and himself, the author of "occasional poems." [See: "Wallace Stevens," Poets of Cambridge] Stevens had five children; the three boys took up law:

Garrett Stevens was born in 1877 and obtained his law degree from Dickinson Law School in 1898. He studied law in the office of his father and was admitted to practice on Dec. 20, 1899.

Wallace Stevens was the second son.

John Bergen Stevens, the third son, born in 1880, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1901, studied law with his father, and was admitted on November 10, 1902, and practiced law in Berks County.

["Benjamin Stevens, father of Garrett B. Stevens, was a farmer, and his father, Abraham Stevens, was a merchant. The first of the family in America came from Holland and held title to lands in Bucks county previous to the advent of the Penns in Pennsylvania."]["A Biography of Stevens' Father" in The Wallace Stevens Newsletter][online text] [The Wallace Stevens Newsletter bio is from Morton L. Montgomery, Historical and Biographical Annals of Berks County, Pennsylvania (Chicago: J.H. Beers, 1909)] [online text]