In 1841 there were 152 people in England with the surname Emptage (including those mis-spelt on the census form but subsequently identified) of which 114 lived on or originated from the Isle of Thanet on the north east coast of Kent, England. Our work began as a study of those Emptages of Thanet (then aged from 3 months to 74 years), their forebears and their descendants, hence the name of this website.
We then turned our attention to the Emptages who were living on the Isle of Sheppey, just a a few miles further north off the Kent coast and to their descendants who established a tree in Grimsby, a fishing port further north on the east coast of England. Clearly our work has out grown the title as our research included people living in London and elsewhere in the 1600s and 1700s and then followed the trail of Emptages and Emtages to Barbados, New Zealand, the USA and elsewhere.
As our research progressed we became aware of the uniqueness of the surname Emptage and a growing belief that the ancestors of all the Emptages and Emtages spread across England and the rest of the world today not only originated in the small Isle of Thanet, on the eastern tip of the county of Kent, in England but that they were probably here in Anglo-Saxon times. And so began a worldwide study of the name.
Researching family history can be a long process but it can be so very well worth while and I’d encourage anybody to have a go, to learn about their roots.
To help us as we spend long hours slaving over a hot computer endeavouring to track down elusive ancestors, I have developed the Family History Detective Kit.
When the average life span for an adult male born in the early 1800s was not much above 50 years, James Robert Emptage defied all the odds and lived to be 101.
Was his great age attributable to his genes or to something else?
Emily Henrietta Emptage married in Hull in 1886, when she was supposedly 21. Her husband, William Edmonson Chafer jumped ship in Melbourne, Australia in 1887. Emily joined him in there in 1889. But a family myth disputes the facts.
Avis Emptage had a difficult and complicated life but in 1913 she married Harold Harding and could have hoped for years of happiness to come. Alas, it wasn’t to be.
John William Benjamin Emptage was 20 when he married Emily Dixon Philpott, 17, in 1876 in Margate. In 1881 they were together with their young daughter but, as far as the records show, that was the last time the family was together and John William had disappeared. What had happened to John and what came next for Emily?
For more than 100 years, child migration schemes removed children from their families and friends and the places they knew. The children were sent to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Rhodesia. Supposedly to give children with poor lives a better chance, it was also a means of increasing the population of these still new countries. At least three of the children were Emptages.
