Stokes, Anson Phelps, 1838-1913.

Anson Greene Phelps (1781-1853) was a New York merchant, a member of the New York Young Men's Bible Society, a descendant of Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor Thomas Dudley and the founder of the Phelps, Dodge & Co. import-export business. He took three sons-in-law into the business, William Earl Dodge (the son of Phelps' business partner, David Low Dodge), Daniel James, and James Stokes (the son of British-born merchant Thomas Stokes, who was also in business with Phelps). Although the sons-in-law became the senior partners in the firm after Phelps' death in 1853, friction between the personalities of William Dodge and James Stokes eventually led Stokes and his sons to withdraw from the business in 1875.

James and Caroline Phelps Stokes had ten children; the eldest was Anson Greene Phelps Stokes (1838-1913), who reinforced the connection to the Phelps family by marrying Helen Louisa Phelps, daughter of banker Isaac Newton Phelps. In addition to his genealogical works, most notably the Stokes Records (1910), Anson Phelps Stokes was the author of many published works on other subjects, including a brief travel memoir, Cruising in the Caribbean with a Camera (published in 1903 by Dodd, Mead), and works on bi-metallism and money, Joint-Metallism, (published in 1895/6, G.P. Putnam's sons) and Dangers of the Proposed National Paper-Money Trust (published in 1898, by the Knickerbocker Press.) Anson and Helen Stokes had nine children including a daughter, Helen Phelps Stokes, who continued her father's genealogical research after his death; and most notably Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes (1867-1944), architect, housing reformer, and author of The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498-1909 .

Sources:

The New York Times, 6/29/13

Tales of the Phelps-Dodge Family: A Chronicle of Five Generations, by Phyllis B. Dodge, 1987

From the guide to the Stokes family genealogical research papers, 1709-1960, (The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division.)