Last week it was too many Henrys for comfort. This week it is a surplus of Williams.
Regularly appearing on David’s radar is someone called Peter Wootton Emptage, baptised in 1830 in Birchington, died in Thanet in 1907.
According to an inquest held in St Lawrence, details published in the Kentish Chronicle on Saturday 14 January 1860, Peter had a brother called Erasmus Sympson Emptage. David appealed for help in finding a ‘home’ for these two, in finding their parentage.
Well, apart from the curious fact that I couldn’t find a baptism for Erasmus, the baptism register for Peter notes his parents as William and Mary, in Birchington. And it seems reasonable to work on the basis that his parents were William Emptage and Mary Wootton who married in Birchington in December 1827. So far, so good.
But then, as a dutiful family historian, I wondered to which branch of our tree William belonged. I think you will agree it was a reasonable thought.
Many hours of work later and…
Next time I have that sort of thought, will somebody please stop me?
Method
I began by looking for a suitable baptism for somebody who would have married in 1827, as a bachelor.
I discovered there were fifteen baptisms of William Emptage between 1793 and 1838 and four of those were between 1793 and 1806. Two of them had died in infancy and one had parents I’d not heard of before. As I knew who the remaining William had married, or thought I did, I decided to plot the parentage of all fifteen Williams.
And, because some of those had fathers with the name of William, I had to go back and start with the William who was baptised in 1767 and steadily work my way through the marriages too.
There were seven marriages between 1795 and 1839. Three of those were between a William and a Mary and two between a William and an Elizabeth. It was not going to be easy to sort them all out.
Table of the baptisms, numbering the Williams in baptism date order
Note: Unfortunately for the family historian, it was not unknown for the vicars or curates to make errors when entering details in the parish registers. I think that the William baptised in 1803, apparently to Henry and Sarah, was the William who died in 1804, the son of Henry and Susanna. And that their next son, born in 1805, was named after the first William.
Table of the marriages
As I matched each marriage to a William baptism, so I kept the same numbering system and plotted them on a tree.
William Emptage baptisms and marriages
Click on the tree to see it in full size, and click again to see the full detail and to move around the tree using side and bottom scroll bars
After many hours work, I had accounted for all the baptisms but was left with two unmatched marriages:
>William Emptage to Mary Wootton, in Birchington in 1827
and
William Emptage to Mary Pain, in St John’s, Margate, in 1835.
Both Williams were described as bachelors but I’m forced to wonder if they were actually widowers marrying again. However, at the time of those two marriages, Mary Coleman, who married William Emptage in 1795 was still live.
However, there is a baptism missing from the table above, that of Joseph William, baptised in 1804 at St John’s, son of Joseph Emptage and Elizabeth Curd.
I think that it is highly likely that, although baptised Joseph William, he was actually referred to just as William. And, because of the parishes, that it was actually [Joseph] William who married Mary Pain and went on to have several children, whilst still living in the parish of St John the baptist, Margate.
But that still leaves me unable to connect the marriage of William to Mary Wootton to a branch of our tree. and, it seems that, after all that work, I’m no nearer discovering to which branch of our tree the brothers Peter Wootton and Erasmus Sympson Emptage belong.
If you have any Williams in your tree, please compare your notes with mine in case I’ve attached any to the wrong line and let me know about any discrepancies.
And if you know anything about Peter Wootton Emptage or his brother Erasmus Sympson Emptage and who they were descended from, please do contact us. David would dearly like to find a home on the tree for those two.
Our contact details are on the contact page.
Susan Morris
16 July 2013