Obituaries Australia

By the death of Mrs. Ada Gertrude Stokes, at Woollahra, on September 8, a link with the Sydney of the early and mid-Victorian era has been severed. She was the widow of Colonel Charles F. Stokes, Honorary A.D.C. to the governor of New South Wales in the nineties of last century, and colonel of the Fourth Infantry Regiment, past Grand-Master of the Grand Lodge of New South Wales, and a merchant in Sydney and Newcastle.

Mrs. Stokes was the youngest daughter of the late James Barker, and was born at Morpeth, New South Wales, in 1841. Her father arrived in Sydney in the twenties, of last century, to join his brother, the late Thomas Barker, of Roslyn Hall, Darlinghurst, in the business of milling. Among her reminiscences of the Sydney of her childhood was the history of the military barracks situated where David Jones and Company's emporium now stands. She lived for some years in Annandale House, on the Parramatta Road, between which place and Sydney was thick bush. Later she lived at a house which is still standing on the Bondi Road, Waverley, and many were the interesting stories she told of her vicissitudes in the early life of Sydney.

Four children survive her — Colonel Stanley F. Stokes. R.E. (London), Mrs. Horsfall, wife of Major A. H. Horsfall, D.S.O. (Svdney), Mrs. Ebsworth, widow of Mr. Alfred Ebsworth, and Miss Mildred Grace Stokes.