Representative Job Evans Stevenson

Job Evans Stevenson (February 10, 1832 – July 24, 1922) was an American lawyer and Republican politician from Ohio who served two terms as a U.S. Representative from 1869 to 1873 and held office in the Ohio State Senate during the Civil War era. His public career spanned local, state, and national service, and he remained active in the legal profession for many years.

Stevenson was born on February 10, 1832, in Yellow Bud, a small community in Pickaway County, Ohio. He completed preparatory studies in his youth, reflecting the typical educational path of aspiring professionals in mid-19th-century Ohio. After his early schooling, he turned to the study of law, preparing for a career in the legal field while rooted in the rural environment of his native state.

After reading law, Stevenson was admitted to the bar and commenced the practice of law in Chillicothe, Ohio, an important regional center and former state capital. In addition to his legal work, he engaged in agricultural pursuits, combining professional practice with the agrarian economy that characterized much of Ohio at the time. His growing involvement in local affairs led naturally to public office and participation in municipal government.

Stevenson’s formal political career began at the local level in Chillicothe, where he served as solicitor of the city from 1859 to 1862. In this capacity he acted as the municipality’s legal advisor and representative, gaining experience in public law and administration. Building on this role, he won election to the Ohio State Senate, serving as a member of that body from 1863 to 1865, a period that overlapped with the Civil War. He also is recorded as having served in the Ohio State Senate from 1864 to 1865, reflecting his tenure during those crucial wartime legislative sessions. While in the state senate, he represented his district as a member of the Republican Party, which had risen to prominence on an antislavery and Unionist platform. In 1864 he sought to extend his public service to the national level as a candidate for election to the Thirty-ninth Congress, but he was unsuccessful in that bid.

Following his state legislative service and his unsuccessful 1864 congressional campaign, Stevenson moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1865. Cincinnati, as a major commercial and political center on the Ohio River, offered broader professional and political opportunities. There he continued his affiliation with the Republican Party and remained active in legal and civic affairs, positioning himself for a future role in national politics.

Stevenson was elected as a Republican to the Forty-first and Forty-second Congresses, representing Ohio in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1869, to March 3, 1873. His two terms in Congress coincided with the Reconstruction era, a significant period in American history marked by efforts to restore the Union, redefine civil rights, and reconstruct the political and social order of the former Confederate states. As a member of the Republican Party representing Ohio, Job Evans Stevenson contributed to the legislative process during these two terms in office, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of his constituents in debates over national policy, economic development, and postwar governance.

After leaving Congress in 1873, Stevenson resumed the practice of law in Cincinnati, returning to the profession that had formed the foundation of his public life. In later years he resided for periods in Lexington and Corinth, Kentucky, maintaining his regional ties in the Ohio River Valley. He died in Corinth, Kentucky, on July 24, 1922, closing a long life that had spanned from the antebellum period through World War I. Job Evans Stevenson was interred in Yellow Bud Cemetery in his birthplace of Yellow Bud, Ohio, symbolically returning to the community where his life and career had begun.