[1] Born in Bloomsbury on 9 January 1808, into a long-established Cumberland family, Rowland Macdonald Stephenson was the oldest son of banker and politician Rowland Stephenson and his wife, Mary Eliza.

[2] Educated at Harrow, he began work in his father's bank but its failure in 1828 (and his father's consequent exile in America)[3] caused him to move into engineering, at first as London agent for the Gospel Oak Ironworks in Staffordshire.

In 1840, Sir Rowland married Marianne, the daughter of Lieutenant Edward Hederstedt, R.N., and together, they had twelve children.

Sir Rowland was managing director of the East India Railway Company, and his brother Cecil Mackintosh Stephenson,[5] was an agent who started building a line from Calcutta in 1849, and he was knighted for this in October 1856.

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