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.
Child Migration
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.
WW1 Military Biographies
We honour the memory of all our ancestors who played their part in World War One at home or away.
So we are pleased to present short biographies of all those whose names we have found in the military records.
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.
Alfred James Emptage
Alfred was born into a long line of mariners but, perhaps realising not only that it was a difficult life but also a dangerous one, he and his four brothers turned their back on the sea and sought other means of making a living.
An assurance agent in Margate, Thanet, Alfred rose to the position of a Vice President of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (pictured) in New York.