I fiund this ibteresting bit on on a website called zimfieldguuide.com: "Lion' and his brothers were from a family of seven children, and he was born in Port Elizabeth in 1848. His family came from Rochester in Kent and settled in Observatory in the Cape. His two brothers , A. H. B. Stevens and George Stevens were pioneers on the Rand and in Rhodesia.
A.H. B. arrived in Rhodesia in 1904, became Editor of the Gatooma Mail and died in Bulawayo in 1944. George was associated with Rhodes and visited Lobengula in 1889.
Charles was known to have been in Rhodesia in April 1891 when he received a prospecting licence and was described as a colourful character, actively prospecting in the Enterprise Gold Belt area and the Penhalonga Valley, north of near Umtali / Mutare.
He gained the nickname of 'Lion' Stevens through an incident which occurred in 1892. A party, consisting of the Reverend Isaac Shimmin, a Wesleyan Missionary, Stevens and two others, was searching in some bushes for a wounded lion in what is now the Harare suburb of Glen Lorne (originally Glen Lorne farm, Enterprise). The lion charged. The safety catch of Shimmin's gun jammed, but Stevens wounded the lion again, and it attacked him. Stevens stuck his foot out, letting the lion chew his boot, until the rest of the party succeeded in killing it."
I havent as yet figured out how the connection ro George Stevens works. I read in a famiky journal that Maximillien had an older brother, Robert Henry, who was a "Rhodes man" and was invioved in negotiating with Lobengula. The Brirish Sourh Afrixa company had a company secretary whho was J.S. Stevens, and later the Broken Hill mine in Northern Rhodesia had a general manager naned R.H. Stevens, who died in 1933. Perhapd someone knows the answers...
