Kempster

Kempster family page

Eleanore Kempster, nee Grosvalet, matriarch of the Kempster family in Jersey and mother of seven sons and five daughters

Record Search

Direct links to lists of baptisms, marriages and burials for the Kempster family can be found under Family Records opposite. If you want to search for records for a spelling variant of Kempster, or for any other family name, just click below on the first letter of the
family name you are interested in. This will open a new tab in your browser giving you a list of family names beginning with that letter,
for which there are baptism records in our database of half a million church and public registry records.

You can also select marriages or burials. Select the name you want
and when the list of records is displayed you can easily refine the search, choosing a single parish, given name(s) and/or start and end dates.

The records are displayed 30 to a page, but by selecting the yellow Wiki Table option at the top left of the page you can open a full, scrollable list. This list will either be displayed in a new tab or a pop-up window. You may have to edit the settings of your browser to allow pop-up windows for www.jerripediabmd.net. For the small number of family names for which a search generates more than 1,500 records you will have to refine your search (perhaps using start or end dates) to reduce the number of records found.

New records

From August 2020 we have started adding records from non-Anglican churches, and this process will continue as more records, held by Jersey Archive, are digitised and indexed. Our database now includes buttons enabling a search within registers of Roman Catholic, Methodist and other non-conformist churches. These records will automatically appear within the results of any search made from this page.

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If you can help with information about the Kempster family, please contact editorial@jerripedia.org, using Jerripedia as the subject of your email. We are particularly interested in information which will help create further family trees, family histories and photographs

A blue link anywhere in the text will lead you to another page with more information on this family

Origins of surname

This is a Medieval name for a wool comber, from camb = 'comb'

Early records

The name first appeared in Jersey records at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries

Variations

• Kempster

Family records

Church records

Tips for using these links

• Kempster baptisms in Jersey
• Kempster marriages in Jersey (groom)
• Kempster marriages in Jersey (bride)
• Kempster burials in Jersey

Family trees

• John Kempster: 19th-21st centuries

Great War service

Sons of Albert Joseph Kempster and Eleonore Louise Grosvalet

• Cecil Kempster (1899- ) (St H), OV, 2nd Lieut, Northampton Regiment (Shown as Albert Cecil in RoS)
• Alfred John Kitchener Kempster (1900- ) (St C) husband of Blanche Binet Gruchy, Private, Devon Regiment
• Father was a career soldier and served in South Africa and during the Great War, but full details are not known

Occupation records

• Kempster Occupation identity cards

Family wills

These wills created by members of the Kempster family are now held by Jersey Archive. By visiting the archive site and using the names, dates and reference numbers shown here, it is possible to view a copy of each will. You will have to subscribe to the Archive's online service to do this. To find out more about this collection, which covers the period from 1663 to 1980, and how to search for your family's wills there, visit our Jersey wills page

Burial records

• Kempster burial records 1820-1978

Family album

Sisters Charlotte (Peggy), Phyllis and Yvonne Kempster. They had seven brothers and another two sisters

Albert Kempster with trophies for shooting. He won a bronze medal at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. He was a member of the British shooting team at the 1908 and 1912 Olympics. In 1908 he finished fifth in the running deer single shots competition as well as in the running deer double shots event. Four years later he won the bronze medal as member of the British team in the team 30 metre military pistol event, as well as in the team 50 metre military pistol competition. In the individual 50 metre pistol event he finished 24th. He came to Jersey in the early 1890s. He was attached to the Northampton Regiment at the time and married a Breton, Eleanor Grosvalet, in 1898 not long before being sent to South Africa, where war had broken out and from where he was later invalided home with enteric fever. In 1900 he was appointed to the permanent staff of the Royal Jersey Militia. He possessed an exceedingly good voice singing opera and operetta. He was an amateur boxer, gymnast and swordsman boxing for the British army in front of the Prince of Wales and the German Kaiser. He was awarded for bravery with the Albert Medal when at great risk to himself he stopped a runaway horse and carriage

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  Doris Kempster and her three youngest sisters across the road from their La Rocque home
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  Charlotte and Yvonne Kempster
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  Albert and Eleonore Kempster on their wedding day
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  The Kempster family
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  Albert Kempster with nine of his children
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  Five of the Kempster sisters at the family home, Rockview, La Rocque, in 1935
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The Kempster family at La Rocque in 1914

Fisherman Bob Kempster crossing Grouville Bay in the 1930s

Family businesses

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  John Kitchener Kempster was a dairy farmer at De La Roche in 1930

Occupation curfew cards

Curfew pass issued to John Kempster during the Occupation as a member of the St Martin Honorary Police

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Tips

The church record links above will open in a new tab in your browser and generate the most up-to-date list of each set of records from our database. These lists replace earlier Family page baptism lists, which were not regularly updated. They have the added advantage that they produce a chronological listing for the family name in all parishes, so you do not have to search through A-Z indexes, parish by parish.

We have included some important spelling variants on some family pages, but it may be worth searching for records for a different spelling variant. Think of searching for variants with or without a prefix, such as Le or De. To search for further variants, or for any other family name, just click on the appropriate link below for the first letter of the family name, and a new tab will open, giving you the option to choose baptism, marriage or burial records. You will then see a list of available names for that type of record and you can select any name from that list. That will display all records of the chosen type for that family name, and you can narrow the search by adding a given name, selecting a parish or setting start and end dates in the form you will see above. You can also change the family name, or search for a partial name if you are not certain of the spelling

The records are displayed 30 to a page, but by selecting the yellow Wiki Table option at the top left of the page you can open a full, scrollable list. This list will either be displayed in a new tab or a pop-up window. You may have to edit the settings of your browser to allow pop-up windows for www.jerripediabmd.net. For the small number of family names for which a search generates more than 1,500 records you will have to refine your search (perhaps using start or end dates) to reduce the number of records found.

New records

Since August 2020 we have added several thousand new records from the registers of Roman Catholic, Methodist and other non-conformist churches. These will appear in date order within a general search of the records and are also individually searchable within the database search form

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