His mother died before he turned two, and his father moved with Stephen to the Western Reserve region of Northeast Ohio.

After David died in 1825, the widow Elizabeth took the two boys back to Seneca County, New York, where she had grown up.

Stephen worked for a time in harness making but in 1855, he set up a distillery in Monroeville, Ohio and it became successful.

In 1864, Stephen Harkness formed a partnership with William Halsey Doan (grandson of one of the original settlers of Cleveland, Ohio) [2] to provide crude oil to refineries.

He collaborated with Charles F. Brush and Rockefeller to build the Cleveland Arcade, one of the first enclosed shopping malls in the United States, modeled after the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, Italy.

[14] After Stephen's death, his widow Anna M. Harkness established the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation dedicated to the improvement of healthcare.

[15] Under the guidance of their second son, Edward Harkness, the foundation made charitable gifts totaling more than $129 million, the equivalent of $3.1 billion in 2023 dollars.

Edward Harkness also made the gifts that established the Yale School of Drama and erected its theatre.

The Harkness family donated funds for the society's second hall, on York Street, New Haven, Connecticut.