In 1897 Margate was once again to witness the tragic loss of life of nine of its lifeboat crew.
One of the crew was John Benjamin Dike, descended from Henry Emptage and Ann Peal.
Albert John Emptage was coxswain of the lifebaot Quiver and was a witness at the inquest and the Board of Trade Inquiry.
Analysis of the wills and testaments of the Emptiach and the Colner [Culmer] families shows that the members of one family frequently appeared in the wills of the other, either as a beneficiary, as feoffees or as witnesses.
In the wills and testaments of our early Emptage ancestors and in the occupations given in the early parish registers, there are several references to a person being a yeoman. What was a yeoman?
To recap, as at the time of the 1841 census, there were four Emptage trees, two in Thanet, one in Sheppey and Grimsby, one in Barbados and we are seeking to prove that the descendants of all four trees are genetically linked.
Our theory is that all those with the name Emptage are descended from the same ancestor who originated in Thanet and we would like to prove it.
To do so, we need to connect all the dots or, at least, as many dots as we can but what can we do if the paper trail is lost?
That the Emptages of the Isle of Sheppey were genetically linked to at least one branch of the Emptages of the Isle of Thanet has been proved by DNA tests.
Whilst the chances of finding a documented paper trail confirming the link are highly unlikely, the study of the baptism and marriage parish registers, coupled with the use or re-use of certain names, has identified the Emptages who probably migrated from Thanet to Sheppey, the place that they stopped at along the way and when the migration happened.
