Caroline Phelps Stokes

Caroline Phelps Stokes (4 December, 1854 – 1909) was a benefactor to many organisations that helped the underprivileged in the USA, Africa and the Near East, supporting churches, libraries, educational establishments, orphanages, housing and more. A fund was set up after her death that continued to support her work.

She was born in New York, 4 December 1854; her mother was Caroline Phelps and her father James Boulter Stokes. They were a family with strong religious convictions who saw it as their duty to help those less fortunate. She lived at her parents house on the East River until the age of three when she moved with her family to 37 Madison Avenues. She attended boarding school at Farmington, Connecticut at the same time as her second cousin, Grace Hoadley Dodge, who later became an important figure in the history of female education and reform.

Caroline’s parents died within months of each other in 1881, leaving an estate worth several million dollars to their seven children. However, the will was contested by Caroline’s sister Dora, and it was 1888 before the money could be distributed. The family home at 37 Madison Avenue was retained and Caroline lived there with her sister, Olivia, until the building was redeveloped in 1902.

As a child Caroline (Carrie to her family) spent her summers away from New York near Ansonia, Connecticut. She donated a public library to the town in 1892, although the town found the gift to be a financial burden. The library bears a plaque dedicating it to her parents and grandfather (Anson Greene Phelps).

She and her sister Olivia worked together on many charitable projects such as the St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia University, Woodbridge Hall at Yale (part of the Hewitt Quadrangle) and the Haynes Memorial Gates at Hartford First Church Cemetery. Several of the buildings they funded were designed by their nephew, Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, who was a partner in the architectural firm of Howells & Stokes.

At the black Tuskegee Institute, founded by Booker T. Washington, they funded bathhouses, a chapel, the Dorothy Hall training building, and entrance gates, working with architect Robert Robinson Taylor. The institute provided vocational training and many of the buildings were constructed by the students. Other works supported by the sisters for African American students were at Hampton Institute Virginia, Calhoun School Alabama and Berea College Kentucky.

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