I just realized there's one more interesting twist to this tale --
Stephan apparently never caught his digit reversal for his offset star which
caused the huge position error for NGC 6138. Nearly ten years later (1880)
he returned to the field and *rediscovered* NGC 6363 - this time he
accurately computed the position micrometrically using a different offset
star! So, not only is NGC 6138 = NGC 6363, but Stephan is responsible for
both of these numbers. Even his descriptions "vF,vS,R,bM" and "vF,S,R,gbM"
are very similar.
Steve