Jess E. Stephens

Jess E. Stephens (1882–1953) was a Los Angeles, California, city attorney who was noted for his legal work on behalf of an important traffic tunnel project in that city and for a union railroad station there, as well as his handling of claims against the city after the collapse of the Saint Francis Dam. He later became a judge of the Los Angeles County Superior Court. Personal Stephens was born May 4, 1882, in State Line, Indiana, the son of Edwin Elias Stephens and Arminda Jane Rice, both of Ohio. He had a brother, Albert Lee Stephens, and four sisters, Edith (later Downs), Elsie (later Musselman), Amy (later Nelson) and Minnie (later Sims). The family moved to Compton, California, when Jess was 2, and he attended school there. In February 1900 he was graduated from Los Angeles High School, and then he studied law with a firm of attorneys and at Stanford University. He was married to Alice Bernice Cherry of Iowa and Illinois in the Pico Heights Congregational Church on September 1 or 18, 1907, and they had a son, Harrison Lee, and a daughter, Barbara (Mrs. Philip Manning). He was a member of the Elks, the Masons, the Shriners and the Whitley Park Country Club. In 1930 he was president of the City Club.