I am a Kent F.H.S. volunteer in our local archives (Medway Archives) and the Chair of the Friends of Medway Archives (FOMA) and am very into local history as well.

I have been researching my Family history since the mid 1970’s, my father started me on this journey by wondering where his mother originated from. Family stories came via an elderly cousin of my grandmother’s, she wrote to my parents regularly and one letter was full of family history (although quite muddled) and having read this letter I was hooked, I spent the next 20 years on and off researching my grandmother’s family. I found a link to some Emptages on the Isle of Sheppey, two brothers William and Henry, sons of William Emptage and Ann (Thomas). These two brothers married two sisters Harriet & Jane Ferrell. They were sisters to my paternal Great Grandmother.

I then got started on my mother’s line and have tracked these ancestors, When I got back to my 2x great grandparents James Overton and Fanny Ellen Emptage, I got curious about the Emptage name, I had come across this name on the Isle of Sheppey, but hadn’t found them before on my maternal line; so amongst all the other lines, I went delving! Over the years I got side tracked as you do, but kept returning to this line, and over the last 4/5 years I have been researching in depth this Emptage line (the Thanet lot!!)

With all the Thanet parish registers published online on Find My Past I have been tracking Emptages through the records viewing the original entries in all the parish registers.

Lineage:

Henry Emptage 1737 and Ann Peel 1737-1812
John Emptage 1765-1836 and Sarah Impet 1765-1819
John Emptage 1799 -1882 and Mary Ann Joy 1805 -1878
Fanny Ellen Emptage 1830-1909 and James Overton 1814 -1878
Charles John Overton 1851 -1913 and Mary Ann Cook 1843 -1913
William James Joy Overton 1884 -1959 and Edith Maud Hiller1885-1934
Rose Ellen Overton 1913- 2002 and Herbert John Walter 1912-1998