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?
The mystery of Emily Henrietta Emptage’s marriage
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 and Harold Harding
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.
The Elephant Trainer and the Missing Husband
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?
Ann Phoebe Emptage nee Hopkins
Ann Phoebe Hopkins was brought up in Canterbury, inland from the Kent coast. So the life she experienced in Margate after she married Alfred Burnett Emptage, a mariner and lifeboat man, was quite different from anything she had experienced previously or could even have imagined.
David Lindsey Emptage 1944 – 2018
The very sad and untimely death of David Lindsey Emptage has left a great hole in the Emptage family. Just as walking on a beach leaves footprints in the sand, so David has left footprints in our hearts.