Born in New Jersey, and initially educated for the ministry, Stephens was apprenticed as a tailor when he was a teenager so that he could help support his family.

After extensive travel throughout the western United States, Mexico, and Europe in the late 1840s and early 1850s, he returned to Philadelphia, where he worked as a tailor and became active in fraternal organizations and the labor movement.

The Knights of Labor continued to expand until backlash against unions following the Haymarket affair and the Panic of 1893 caused workers to depart the K of L, and its membership declined until the organization became defunct in 1949.

[4] He taught himself several foreign languages including French, German, and Spanish, and practiced them to improve his proficiency, which enabled him to read works by European authors.

[4] Stephens also joined several fraternal organizations, including the Masons, Knights of Pythias, and Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

[7] The Knights of Labor was intended as a voluntary association of producers, who would work cooperatively and fraternally, as opposed to the self-centered materialism of the Gilded Age.

[12] In it, Stephens expressed his conviction that the "Everlasting Truth sealed by the Grand Architect of the Universe" is that "everything of value, or merit, is the result of creative Industry.

The aftermath of the Haymarket affair and the Panic of 1893 caused workers to start leaving the Knights of Labor,[5] and its membership dwindled until its last local affiliate dropped the name in 1949.

[2] He was still revered by many members, and as a result, in 1886 the K of L General Assembly voted to grant $10,000 to provide a home for Stevens' widow and children.

[19][20] They were the parents of four children -- Mary E., George W., Ellie, and Carrie P.[20] Stephens' unmarked grave features prominently in the 2007 film Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind, a narration-less documentary in which filmmaker John Gianvito silently displays grave sites and historical locations of American freethinkers and leaders of American Radical political movements.