My father's descent can be traced back to Gabriel or Gaberill Stokes, son of John Stokes, born 1680, who appears to have inherited good brains. He was a well-known engineer of Dublin, where he lived in Essex Street. He suggested a plan for supplying that city with water without the use of pumps, wrote a Treatise on Hydrostatics, and designed the Pigeon-House Wall in the Harbour. He was Deputy Surveyor General for Ireland, and maps exist in the Record Office of Dublin which are countersigned by him.

The history of the Stokes family, previous to 1618, is involved in obscurity. There was a very ancient family of that name who lived in Gloucestershire and owned a good deal of land in that County. Two representatives of that family were living in 1876, Dr Thomas Stokes, of Mailsworth, and his nephew Adrian Stokes, of Southport, both advanced in life and both without issue. Dr T. Stokes possessed an old parchment pedigree, by which his descent could be traced back to the year 1312. It gives the name in different forms as de Stokke, afterwards Stokys. On the tomb of Adam de Stokke in the parish church of Great Bedwyn, Wilts., is the figure of a Crusader with the legs crossed. Dr T. Stokes expressed his belief that the family about whom this memoir is written was a younger branch of his own family. One of the grounds of his opinion was that the Irish branch possessed a seal bearing bezants and a crescent used by Dr John Stokes, Scholar and Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, not a man likely to use a seal to which he was not entitled.