Background
She was born in New York, 4 December 1854. Her mother was Caroline Phelps and her father James Boulter Stokes.
She was born in New York, 4 December 1854. Her mother was Caroline Phelps and her father James Boulter Stokes.
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.
A fund was set up after her death that continued to support her work. They were a family with strong religious convictions who saw it as their duty to help those less fortunate. However, the will was contested by Caroline’s sister Dora, and it was 1888 before the money could be distributed.
As a child Caroline (Carrie to her family) spent her summers away from New York near Ansonia.
She donated a public library to the town in 1892, although the town found the gift to be a financial burden. 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.
Caroline gave money to the American College in Beirut to fund the training school for nurses.
In New York she supported the African American orphanages, homes for the elderly, and low cost housing. She also had interests in nature, supporting a project to preserve wild flowers and gave money for the protection of wild birds. Caroline Stokes moved to California for health reasons towards the end of her life and died in her home at Redlands on 26 April 1909.
In her will she detailed her wish for a fund to be set to provide housing and education for African Americans, Native Americans plus needy and deserving white students.
Her sister, Olivia, continued her charitable works and acted as a trustee of the Phelps Stokes Fund.