Shall we rename the scarecrow?  Called 'Pringle' after the Beagle Captain, Pringle Stokes, who shot himself in South America, we have now confirmed that he is 'no relation'.

The census records, kindly copied for us by Mike Bennett, give us a complete picture of who lived in the house between 1841 and 1891.  In 1841 there were 6 servants living in to serve five adults under John Stokes (aged 64) the head of the house.  In 1851 his only son, also John Stokes, was alone on census night, with six servants.  It seems that his wife, Sophia Elizabeth may have been in Liverpool giving birth to daughter Emma.  In 1861 John and Sophia were not living at Cuffern, having presumably let the house to the Woodyate family, but by 1871 they were back.  Had they been in Liverpool for a period? 
John was a coroner by 1851, magistrate from 1862 and later Deputy Lieutenant for Pembokeshire.  Sophia lived until September 1907 dying aged 95.  In the 1891 census she is living here with her daughter Emma, son in law, Arthur Wellington Massey, and their three young sons, all of whom had been born in East Grinstead.  This large household, augmented on the day, by a niece and a visitor, George Massey, Rector of Gambleston, Prendergast, required the services of eight staff.  These included a dairymaid, a groom and a stable-boy.

(Curious note: the marriage settlement of John Stokes and Sophia Elizabeth Gray, dated 8th October 1847 says that she is 'from the British Museum.'!!)

A John Edward Gray (1800 to 1875) was Zoological Keeper at the Museum, and his brother George Robert Gray (1808 to 1879) was also a zoologist there in 1831.  Their father Samuel Frederick Gray (1780 to 1836) was a published naturalist and pharmacologist.  However Sophia's father was Francis Edward Gray who died in 1814.

The archives in Pembrokeshire Record Office contain an undated and unattributed family tree (D/EE/2/51) which has certainly clarified some relationships in the family.

The visit of John Maxwell, a columnist on the Jamaican Observer, to Cuffern over Christmas 2004 opened up the possibility of links between the Stokes family and that island, where the Stokes names exist, which will be explored.  A Caribbean connection has been established through Antony Stokes, son of Florence Stoke of Pill in Steynton.  A renown lawyer who became Chief Justice for Georgia from 1769 to 1782, and wrote regarding constitutional and legal affairs as they affected the Caribbean colonies as well as the 13 rebel American colonies, was previously in Leeward Isles, Antigua and St. Kitts.  His plantation in Savannah was called 'Pembroke'.  (Obituary - Gentleman's Magazine Volume 68 Page 349, 1799).

"Politically, many lawyers were conservatives.  But lawyers, or men who called themselves lawyers, were among the founders of the Republic.  John Marshall, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Wilson, John Jay of New York, George Wythe of Virginia, Francis Hopkinson of Pennsylvania - all these were lawyers.  Some leading lawyers - Anthony Stokes of Georgia and William Smith of New York - chose the losing side in the Revolution and left the country.  Smith later became chief justice of the province of Quebec.  Many lawyers, if not most, were loyalists; yet twenty-five of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence were lawyers, and thirty-one of the fifty-five delegates to the Constitutional Convention were lawyers.  What these facts show, according to Professor Boorstin, is "the pervasiveness of legal competence among American men of affairs and the vagueness of the boundary between legal and all other knowledge in a fluid America."  Yet these men identified themselves as lawyers, not as doctors, politicians, or historians.  The line between lawyer and laymen was not as indistinct as it had been in earlier years.  There was a pride of profession among these men, who thought of themselves as attorneys, and a common fund of experience and training, whether or not they had ever replevied a cow or drawn up a chancery bill."

The family tree found in the Pembrokeshire Record Office shows that John Lort Stokes was the second son of Henry Stokes, himself the second son of John Stokes Stokes of Cuffern.  John Stokes Stokes was the son of John Rees Stokes who built Cuffern Manor.  Although it is clear that John Lort Stokes lived at Scotchwell, Haverfordwest not Cuffern we continue to be fascinated by his involvement with Darwin and the exploration of Australia and New Zealand.  As a nineteen year old he had shared Darwin's cabin on the famous voyage.

Between 1837 and 1843 the Beagle sailed to Australia again and Stokes was 1st Lieutenant and Official surveyor.  But during the voyage he succeeded as Captain and married Fanny Jane Marley.  From 1848, he Captained HMS Acheron as it carried out the first hydrographical survey of New Zealand though his wife died on the way out, in Cape Town.  The ship had a crew of 100 in a 150' ship.  They anchored in New Plymouth and measured the height of Mt Taranaki.
(In 1820 Peter Williams from Milford in Wales had named Milford Sound, Cleddau River, St. Anns Point, Dale Point and Mt. Pembroke - all Pembrokeshire names.)
Our first New Zealand visitors to Cuffern said these names had reverted to the Maori now.

Darwin met Robert FitzRoy and was accepted by the latter as an unpaid naturalist.  The 19 year old John Lort Stokes shared Darwin's cabin on this voyage.  This journey took in most of South America, the Falkland Islands, the Galapagos Islands, Tahiti, Bay of Islands, near New Zealand, the southern coastline of Australia, Cocas Islands, Mauritius, Simons Bay, near the Cape of Good Hope, St.Helena, the Ascension Islands, then back across the Atlantic to Bahia in Brazil [to check errors in longitude] and finally the Cape Verde Islands and then the Azores before heading for home.  No fewer than 76 personnel were aboard her 90 foot hull when she sailed for South America.

2nd October 1836.  After a voyage around the world lasting four and three-quarter years, HMS Beagle arrived again in England and anchored at Falmouth.  During the following weeks Beagle travelled to Plymouth and Portsmouth.
28th October 1836.  Arrived at Greenwich, where observations were made and chronometer rates ascertained.
17th November 1836 Ship paid off.

1837, FOURTH COMMISSION: Commander John Clement Wickham, and the FIFTH COMMISSION: Commander John Lort Stokes took the Beagle to Australia for the next five and a half years, in which time, by tedious work, the officers and men eradicated all the blank spots from Australia's coastline not filled in by previous explorers.  They also made Endeavour Strait, Bass Strait and the entrance to Port Phillip Bay safe for large ships.

30th September 1843.  After more than six years of absence, arrived at Spithead.
14th October 1843.  Paid off at Woolwich Dockyard.  The captain, Commander John Lort Stokes, left HMS Beagle at the same place he had first stepped on to the ship's deck as a young midshipman eighteen years before.  Talk about dedication to duty!