Modern History
The modern history of the area, as far as European settlement is concerned, began on 21 September 1839, when local Ngāti Awa chief Te Puni gestured with his arms and pointed finger the areas of the Hutt Valley and Wellington, that he was willing to sell to the New Zealand Land Company through its agent Colonel William Wakefield aboard the ship Tory. Stokes Valley, which at that time was simply an unnamed branch valley of the Hutt Valley, was included in this land.
The second of the New Zealand Company's ships to arrive in Wellington was the 273-ton Cuba on the 3 January 1840. It had on board 20 able-bodied men aged from 20 to 27. Among these was the Company's surveying party, whose duty was to plan the city at Thorndon and survey the site in readiness for the arrival of the emigrants who already procured sections in London. The first emigrant ship, containing 85 adult settlers and their 42 children, arrived only 17 days later. At this stage there was no sections or shelters surveyed for most of the people, and many had to live in huts built by the Mãori, or simply shelter under karaka trees. The Wellington and Hutt Valley area was hurriedly surveyed.
The original survey party that arrived in 1840 on the Cuba comprised Captain William Mein Smith (Surveyor General) and Messrs. R. D. Hanson, W. Carrington, R. Park, R. Stokes, and K. Bethune, all well known personalities in the early history of Wellington. Robert Stokes, after whom the valley was named, left the employ of the New Zealand Company in early 1842 and went into business for himself. Stokes Street in Wellington was named in his honour in the 1841 map of Wellington. The first mention of the name Stokes Valley was made in January 1843 in the first plan of the valley, and it seems likely that Stokes Valley was named in honour of Robert Stokes as a member of the original surveying party.
Robert Stokes took a prominent part in Wellington affairs, including government. He published a work in 1844 on the Wairau Affray, led the first European crossing of the Ruimutaka range to the Wairarapa, built the (now) oldest house in Wellington, "Saint Ruadhan", on Woolcombe Street. He was a keen gardener, known for his prize-winning vegetables and flowers, and was also a keen botanist, and was treasurer of the Horticultural and Botanical Society. He became a publisher and printer, his name appearing on The New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian as a printer He was a prominent speaker, and was instrumental in carrying a Bill to establish a municipal corporation for Wellington and a railway link to the Wairarapa. Stokes stood as an elected member of the Wairarapa Council in 1867, and was a Member of the Victoria University of Wellington Senate from 1871 to 1878. Stokes died at Clanricarde Gardens, London, on 20 January 1880.
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