County surveyor for Co. Kerry, 1834-1876. Henry Stokes, who was born in Dublin in 1808, was the fourth son of Whitley Stokes, MD, later Regius Professor of Medicine at Trinity College, Dublin, by his wife, Sarah (née Boswell) and a great-grandson of GABRIEL STOKES GABRIEL STOKES . He was apprenticed to a Mr McKenna, possibly the Dublin builder ARTHUR MCKENNA. ARTHUR MCKENNA. )n 17 May 1834 he was appointed county surveyor for Co. Kerry, remaining in the post for over forty years. He also practised privately, and was employed by thre Board of Works on the maintenance of grant roads in the 1830s and 1840s and as an inspector under the Landed Property Improvement Act. in the 1860s and 1870s. In 1844 he was a witness to the Devon commission. He retired in 1876 and died on 27 March 1887.
Stokes married Letitia, daughter of Francis Christopher Bland, of Derryquin, Co. Kerry, on 11 April 1837 and was the father of five sons and two daughters. Two of his sons, Henry Edward and Gabriel, were knighted for their work in the Indian Civil Service. Gabriel's second wife, May Florence, was a daughter of JAMES FRANKLIN FULLER.& JAMES FRANKLIN FULLER.& #160; WILLIAM STOKES[2] WILLIAM STOKES[2] was a second cousin of Henry Stokes.
Drawings by Stokes for roads and bridges in Co. Kerry, dating from between 1835 and 1843 are in the Office of Public Works drawings collection in the National Archives (Ref. OPW5HC/6). Only two of these have been entered under WORKS. The complete list may be accessed on the National Archives website.
ICEI: member by 1849; council member, 1859; not on list of members for 1870; re-elected, 1874; delivers papers on 'The Ventilation of Coal Mines', 4 December 1878, and 'Incombustible materials for building', 1 February 1882.
GLFI: member of Lodge 77, Newry; transferred to Lodge 86, Downpatrick, 1853; Worshipful Master, 1854-55; Senior Warden, 1872.
Address: Home: Askive, Sneem, Co. Kerry, 1865 until death.
See WORKS and BIBLIOGRAPHY. BIBLIOGRAPHY.
References
The fullest account of Stokes's life and particularly of his career as a county surveyor is in Brendan O'Donoghue, The Irish County Surveyors 1834-1944 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), 286-287. References and information supplied to the compiler of this database by Brendan O'Donoghue are marked B.O'D. All other information in this entry not otherwise accounted for is from the account of the Stokes family in Burke's Irish Family Records (1976), 1054.
O'Donoghue, op. cit., 304.
Arthur McKenna was building the anatomy house at Trinity in 1823-24; O'Donoghue, loc. cit., suggests other possible candidates.
Dublin Evening Post, 20 May 1834 (IAA, Edward McParland files, Acc. 2008/44).
Sarah Bendell, ed., Dictionary of Land Surveyors and Local Map-Makers of Great Britain and Ireland 1530-1850 (2nd edition, 1997), II, 491.
He is still named as the incumbent in Thom's Directory for 1875 but was replaced by William Henry Deane the following year.
Kerry Evening Post, 30 Mar 1887 (B.O'.D).
Information from Teresa Stokes, great-great-granddaughter of Henry Stokes (Mar 2014).
List of members in TICEI 3 (1849).
Jones transcripts from Thom's directories.
IB 12, 15 Aug 1870, 197.
TICEI 12 (1876-1879), 120-125; IB 20, 15 Dec 1878, 359.
TICEI 14 (1881-1883), 55-59.
GLFI archives.
