Laura Carter

Laura Carter

• Laura Carter was born circa 1902 in Ohio.
• She married Albert Leo Stevens, son of Franz Hofner and Anna Paulina Waldheger, on 6 July 1925.
• Albert Leo Stevens and Laura Carter appeared in the US federal census of 1 April 1930 in Otsego Township, Otsego County, New York. Leo's age is recorded as 48 years.
• She was a stenographer with Clark's Estate, according to the 1930 census.
• The following appeared on 9 May 1944 in The New York Times: (Bardonia, N.Y., May 8) A. Leo Stevens, long prominent in aviation circles, died here last night at the home of his brother, Frank Stevens. He was en route to Washington from his home at Fly Creek in Otsego County.
       Mr. Stevens, who was born in Cleveland, sixty-seven years ago, was credited with numerous developments in parachutes and was said to have worked on the earliest dirigibles.
       He became interested in ballooning as a youth in Cleveland. He later gave balloon exhibitions, then moved to New York where he opened a parachute shop.
       During the first World War Mr. Stevens was an army balloon instructor at Fort Omaha, Neb., where he worked with Gen. H. H. Arnold, then a major. He later was an instructor at Scott Field, Ill. Mr. Stevens retired from business in 1927, but continued to experiment on various areronautical devices. He had been working with the Switlak Corporation in New Jersey.
       He was a member of various balloon clubs of France and America, and an honorary member of the Aeronautical Society of America. He leaves a widow, the former Laura Carter of Akron, Ohio.
       Nationally acclaimed as "Prince Leo the Boy Aeronaut" in the Gay Nineties, Mr. Stevens had made more than 3,400 balloon ascensions and on many occasions returned to earth dangling from a parachute. He was only 12 years old when he first went up in a balloon from amusement park, making the trip alone and without permission, after secretly entering the basket and cutting the mooring rope. An adventurous air ride, punctuated by bumps into houses and trees, ended with the boy tumbling into the shallow waters of a lake at Canton, Ohio.
       He became one of the first American parachute performers. In 1895 he excited the residents of Montreal by ending a jump on the spire of Notre Dame Cathedral. Three years later he landed in the Atlantic Ocean two miles off Long Branch, N. J. Another time his balloon exploded a thousand feet up and he had to make a hurried descent, missing by a short distance the gorge of Niagara Falls.
       A dirigible built by Mr. Stevens in 1902 made its first successful flight on Sept. 30 of that year, and over the Sheepshead Bay race track found another ship in the air. The rival was an imported replica of the one in which Santos-Dumont had flown around the Eiffel Tower, and the appearance of the two dirigibles at the same moment so disturbed the race track proceedings that the fourth race had to be postponed.

• Last Edited: 14 Mar 2011