When Rodney Lewis Steele was born on 28 January 1903, in Wilmot Township, Bradford, Pennsylvania, United States, his father, Clark Hollenbeck Steele, was 28 and his mother, Bertha Louise Morningstar, was 20. He married Beatrice P. Abrams on 5 October 1926. He lived in Wilmot, Bradford, Pennsylvania, United States for about 10 years and Endicott, Broome, New York, United States in 1930. He died in December 1987, in Broome, New York, United States, at the age of 84.