[3] Born on April 2, 1849, near Portage in Livingston County, New York, Frank Stephens was the eldest of the four sons of Nelson and Julia (née Preston) Benson.

[4] At age 24, he married Elizabeth Fowler,[5] and in 1874 the couple moved to Colorado, where he studied taxidermy with ornithologist Charles E.

In the early 1880s, Stephens collected in southwest New Mexico[7] and Arizona for Aikens and for William Brewster (ornithologist) of Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology.

[2] He was a frequent contributor to The Condor, founded the San Diego Society of Natural History's scientific journal, Transactions, and in 1906 self-published his major work, California Mammals (illustrated by W. J. Fenn).

[2] Although he had faced difficult conditions on many desert treks, Stephens was felled in the city by modern technology: crossing a street in San Diego, he was struck by a street car on September 25, 1937, and died ten days after the accident on October 5, 1937, at Mercy Hospital in San Diego.