My maternal family has always intrigued me, which is what led me to start researching the Emptage Family. I discovered that they were from the Emptages of the Isle of Sheppey and that lead me to Eileen Emptage of Grimsby. She had married into the Grimsby Emptages (who were descended from the Sheppey Emptages) and had already done of a lot of work on the Grimsby and Sheppey Emptages.

Unfortunately Eileen passed away shortly after I found her but she did give me a lot of info on the family and with what I knew of my lineage in later years I have pieced together my story.

This family has had strong military ties from the early times. My great great grandmother, Cordelia Emptage, was married to General Charles Lee. Their daughter Harriet married Sgt. Major White who was also career military man and very snobbish about it. He was so adamant about it that, when his son Thomas A. White did not want to join the Military, he disowned him!

Son Thomas married his childhood sweetheart and they moved to Australia and never had contact with his family again until I found his granddaughter Dulcie and we have become internet friends as well as collaborators in family history. The ironic part of it was that he did join the military in later years and fought for Australia in the war.

His sister, my grandmother, Edith May White, had a similar experience. She fell in love with a gardener and Sgt. Major White felt this was beneath them so she was also disowned. She married her gardener Ernest Russell and they immigrated to Canada where he also joined the military and fought for Canada in WW1.

Because my grandmother never talked about her family we knew them not and it has been very interesting finding their families and corresponding with them.

Those of us descended from the Isle of Sheppey Emptages can trace our line back to William Emptage who married Ann Fisher in Queenborough, Sheppey, in 1746. However, William’s roots are proving very difficult to find and a lot of work is going on to find the relationship between the Isle of Sheppey Emptages and the Emptages who were in the Isle of Thanet from hundred of years before.

Lineage:

Willam Emptage c1720-1762 and Ann Bassett c1719-1760
John Emptage 1748-1832 and Mary Holmden 1754-1832
Stephen Emptage 1793-1885 and Phoebe Williams 1789-1841
Cordelia Emptage 1819 and General Charles G.T.Lee 1817
Harriet Lee 1844 and Thomas White 1840
Edith May White 1881 and Ernest Frank Russell 1886
Kathleen Evelyn Russell 1915 and Charles Lennox Allum 1907