For many years, the consensus within my Empson family, was that my GGG/father was one Richard Empson. Due to this family myth, 1 could not take my researches beyond his son, Charles Empson. While 1 possessed a copy of Charles's Marriage Certificate, no parents were mentioned, although 1 had gathered a significant amount of data on Charles and his wife Louisa Howard.

Charles left England on the ship "London" on Dec. 29th. 1841 at the age of 22, bound for Nelson NZ. On his departure, he was given a Bible by his sister Mary Ann.

It was also known from family records that Charles ostensibly had brothers, or cousins, Frederick and Henry. Frederick, being an Architect of Birmingham, and Henry a Lawyer. It was also known from records that the mythical Richard was a lawyer who had a practice in Bath and also Leamington. Other than more rather vague information 1 could get no further.

However with Charles' future wife, Louisa Howard, 1 knew considerably more. She and her family left England also in 1841, on the ship "Prince Rupert" However their ship foundered at the Cape of Good Hope, and after some months delay in South Africa continued their trip to NZ, in the ship "Antilia". Louisa was six years old at the time. She was to marry Charles Empson when she was 18 and he 33.

Part of my quest was emailing various Empsons around the world. Many did not answer. Of the ones that did, only one was promising, and he was in the USA. He said his father was a historian and had undertaken extensive research on his family, and that he remembered something about a GGG/Father being a lawyer in Bath.

After contacting this person's father, who turned out to be Donald Empson, we found quite a few interesting coincidences, the first being, that his GG/Father Frederick was also given a Bible by his sister Mary Ann on the same date as my GG/Father Charles.

His Frederick was also an architect of Birmingham. But the sticking point was, that his GGG/Father was William Charles Empson.

Fortuitously, about that time I received a copy of an almost illegible hand-written document, which I immediately transcribed into my computer (with much effort and with many missing words.) The document thus became Reasonably readable.

To my amazement, the name of William Charles Empson, and his wife Mary Ann (nee) Featherston, plus Frederick of Birmingham, and last but not least my Charles emerged. The document was not signed, but I found by comparing the handwriting with a known signature, of Charles, on a Title Deed, to the writing on the document, I realised that it was in fact written by my Charles.

Thus, not only did I find my GGG/F, but also another generation further back and a host of relatives in the USA.

Without the contact with 3rd cousin Don Empson and with his snippets of information, I probably would not have bothered transcribing the old document, and thus being no further ahead in my search. Fate or dead luck? Which?

I had gathered about 500 individuals in my Family Tree Maker genealogical program, through talking to relations, some of whom had conducted research. But I only had information about the Empson line back to my GGrandparents (John Empson & Phoebe Hadland of Oxfordshire in Southern England). To remedy this I tried two approaches, First, mass e-mailing and second Intemet searching.

Mass e-mailing. I identified about 125 Empson e-mail addresses from various web sites such as 'Yahoo! People Search' and automatically transferred these to my email address book. Clearly some of these were duplicates, and as I was to find out later (from 'postmaster delivery failures'), many were out of date. Finally, I was left with about 75 Empson e-mail addresses, which was about 4% of the estimated Empson population of 2000 (reference from extrapolated phone book and similar data from 'The World Book of Empsons' by Halbert's Family Heritage 1991). However not everyone with an e-mail address is traceable. For example, while I know my brother and I cannot be found on a people search, my sister under her maiden name is! (why is this?).

My e-mail requested anyone to make contact if they knew of my GGrandparents or other Empsons from Oxfordshire. I received ten replies, either just friendly notes or parts of other unrelated family trees, but one put me in paper mail contact with a distant cousin, whom I didn't know I had. She had undertaken extensive research into our family and with the help of others had traced the family back to a John Empson & Elizabeth Hucking, married in Stonesfield Oxfordshire 1602!

Internet searching

I searched the intemet search engines using the words 'Empson Family Tree' which took me to various genealogical sites, an (unrelated) Empson family tree on a home page in New Zealand and in particular to an Empson family home page in the US on gardening, with a guest book. Here there were some Empsons talking to other Empsons but one particular 'guest' mentioned that her father had a wealth of Empson data. So contacts were made first in Australia and then back to England to Dick Empson who sent me the first edition of 'Empsonian Logic', which I in turn e-mailed to my family. This kindled my sister's interest and she contacted Dick with our limited family tree knowledge and he immediately fitted us into his well documented family tree. The same tree that I found by mass e-mailing!

So our family was really excited to find our roots, and we thank everyone, especially Dick, Angie, Warwick, Rebecca and Stuart who helped. It was strange to think that, unknown to me, my father and his ancestors were recorded on someone else's computer. I just needed to make the link. With this new technology I got lucky through logical searching and e-mailing.

Empson wills from 1868 to 1948 are available on a database. But many much earlier ones are extant. In a will dated 1788 for example, William Empson, in addition to sums of money bequeathed his 'suite of black', his 'great coat', two silver spoons, a pair of sheets and a tea chest amongst other items to various of his relatives