Aged 17, Henry Joseph decided to emigrate. He arrived in New York on 18 June 1871 to start his new life but the next 15 years of Henry’s life were to become rather complicated.
Elijah Emptage
Born in Birchington, Thanet, in 1795, Elijah was 40 when he and his wife Sarah decided to emigrate to Ohio, USA with their five daughters though their eldest child, Daniel, chose to remain at home in Thanet. The son of an agricultural labourer, Elijah became a respected gardener and prominent figure in his new community.
Frances Alice Emptage
Frances’ brother Alfred and sister Rosamond had emigrated to the USA in 1882 and 1884. In 1887, aged 16, Frances followed but rather than join her siblings in New York she travelled west to California. In 1890 a San Francisco newspaper published an article describing a rather difficult position she had got herself into.
Rosamond Hopkins Emptage
Rosamond was just 14 when she left England and sailed to join her brother, Alfred James in New York. She joined Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (pictured) as a stenographer.
Thomas Emptage
Seeking new opportunities and the chance to own land, in 1835 Thomas and his wife Ann, with their two tiny children, made the long trip from Thanet to Liverpool and then across the Atlantic Ocean to New York. Then followed a journey of 470 miles across country by covered wagon until they arrived in Wyandot County, Ohio.
Alice Eva Emptage
Alice married in 1883, just before her sixteenth birthday and two years later she and her husband emigrated to Illinois, USA. Having given birth to a boy in 1886, Alice was to die in 1893, aged just 25.