THOMAS EDWARD PETTMAN (1841-1910) was born at Ramsgate on 10 May 1841 and baptized on 12 September 1841 in the parish of St Peter the Apostle. Like his father, he taught music. He was also a church organist. On 8 April 1868, at the age of 26, he married a local girl named Agnes Deane at Thanet Register Office. She was 34.

Advertisements in the Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald of Saturdays 14 and 21 August 1869 addressed "To Schools and Others at Herne Bay and Whitstable" offered tuition at 12 William Street, Herne Bay. It is not clear the young couple were living at the time. Agnes would have been pregnant with their daughter, Grace, who was born early in 1870,

Thomas was active in the Plymouth Brethren at Ramsgate. A conversion experience while walking near the cliffs is said to have changed his life.

He became a leading member of the (liberal, breakaway) Abbott's Hill assembly at Ramsgate, and was one of the signatories of the letter of 3 September 1879, along with T.A. Brunker, A, Hope and J. H. Smith to G.C. Millward excluding H.J. Jull, W.R. Cox, W. Johnson jnr., C.J. Smyth. R.W. Crane and G.C. Millward from fellowship as long as they broke bread at an independent table at Ramsgate.

This letter was passed on to John Nelson Darby, who was in France at the time. The dispute continued, and correspondence between Darby and Thomas Pettman in July 1880 and May 1881 survives, where Darby disputes the claim of Abbott's Hill to be God's assembly. He favoured the stricter assembly at Guildford Hall. This led to one of the early schisms among the Brethren.

For many years, Thomas held beach services for children at Broadstairs.

In 1871 and 1874, Thomas and Agnes were living at 1 Victoria Terrace, Vale Square, Ramsgate, with their daughter Grace. By 1881, though, the family had moved to the Elms Estate, living at Ladbroke Villa. Later they moved again, to Cliffdale, 12 Arklow Square, and it was here that Thomas' wife, Agnes, died on 22 September 1897. She was 65.

At this time, Thomas was 56, and Grace, his daughter, was 27. Less than a year later, on 3 August 1898, Thomas remarried at the Thanet Register Office. His second wife's name was Kate Eliza Burch. She was 36.

Muriel Pout recalls that his new wife softened Thomas, "made him very happy and shed a good deal of his gloomy and separating Brethen exclusive past."

The couple had two children. They lived on at Arklow Square, and later (some time after 1901) at Goodwin Lodge, 45 Thanet Road, until Thomas' death from chronic bronchitis on 4 March 1910. He was 68, and his younger son only eight years old. He was buried together with Agnes.

Kate moved to 3 Elms Park Terrace, Ramsgate, where she supplemented her income after Thomas' death by taking in summer boarders. (The house had eleven rooms.) On Census Day 1911, she had her three sisters-in-law, Harriet Lang, Elizabeth Pettman and Anna Goodchild staying with her. The children remember being sent to Hawkhurst during the summer, "to keep them out of the way." However, this stopped when war broke out, when the danger of bombing and long-range shellfire led her to move with the children to London, where contacts among the Brethren helped find suitable accommodation. She moved to live with her son, Ernest, at 72 Morley Hill, Enfield. Despite deafness, she was a regular attender at the Enfield Brethren Meeting until her death. She retained the house in Ramsgate, which war conditions had rendered unmarketable.

Kate Pettman, née Burch, died on 2 March 1938, aged 76. She was buried at Enfield.

Thomas Edward Pettman and his wife Agnes had one child:

1 GRACE PETTMAN (1870-1952), born on 19 March 1870. She wrote numerous Christian books, as well as articles in "Horner's Penny Stories", under her own name, and under the pseudonyms of G.E.C. Sutherland, Nigel Strong, Spencer Deane, Helen Kent, Fan of the Ferry, A Curate's Wife and the Daughter of the Manse.

As a child, she hated the silence at Brethren meetings. (Her mother once told her: "If you fidget in the meeting I shall take you out and whip you." In the next pause a voice said: "Well, take me out and whip me then. I'd rather that than stay here.") Although she joined the Baptists, she retained much of her Brethren upbringing, not knitting, sewing, reading secular books or allowing homework on Sundays, and avoiding the cinema, dancing, alcohol or the theatre. Yet at 17 she was writing fiction without her father's knowledge.

Grace lived at home in Ramsgate until she was 31. In spring 1902 she married Herbert Pout, who is said to have been converted at a meeting taken by her at a mission service in a chapel "on the Kentish hills". He was born on 14 July 1878, and so was 23. She was 32. Grace paid for him to attend Glasgow Bible College. He become a travelling evangelist, and the couple went to live in Brighton. In 1906, they were at 'Roslyn', Horsham, Sussex, and in 1910 and 1911 at 'Glendevon', Portland Road, Hove. In 1921 they were at 116 Hollingbury Park Avenue, Hove.

She retained her links with Ramsgate, however, and in November 1932 published Milestones of Memory, a history of the Cavendish Baptist Chapel, founded in 1833. She described herself for this centenary booklet as "formerly a member of Cavendish."

During the First World War, Herbert served in the Royal Naval Air Force. In September 1939, Grace was at 13 Treassowe Road, Penzance, describing herself as an author and freelance writer. Herbert was at 19 Fearon Road, Hastings, an "incapacitated RAF mechanic."

Herbert Pout died on 4 August 1940. Grace Pettman-Pout died in 1952 at the age of 81.

Herbert and Grace Pout had a daughter:

Thomas Edward Pettman and his wife Kate had two children:

2 FREDERICK THOMAS PETTMAN (1899-1989), born on 10 August 1899. He became an accountant and company secretary. In 1921 he was living with his widowed mother at 27 Alconbury Road, Hackney and working as an accountant for Messrs Peal and Co of 11 Ironmongers Lane, E.C. On 25 June 1927, he married Helen Ebben, the youngest daughter of Frederick Ebben and his wife Helen Sanders. Helen's grandparents are said to have come to England from the Netherlands. She had been born on 14 January 1894. They lived at Mount Pleasant, 80 Gordon Hill, Enfield.

Helen Pettman died on 16 October 1953, and Fred remarried, to Nora Anne Marsh, who had been born on 26 November 1912. He died on 17 August 1989, just after his ninetieth birthday.

Fred and Helen Pettman had five children:

3 ERNEST EDWARD ARTHUR PETTMAN (1901-1973) was born on 8 May 1901. He worked in the insurance field for the Hudson's Bay Company, and later for A. Besse and Co. and then St. Helen's Trust. In 1921 he was living with his widowed mother at 27 Alconbury Road, Hackney and working as a marine insurance clerk for Lloyds at the Royal Exchange, E.C. He also acted as an insurance broker with his own private company. He married Doris Frances Marion Baker on 5 September 1933 at Danbury, Essex. (Their courtship correspondence has been preserved.)

At that time Ernest was living at 72 Morley Hill, Enfield. The couple moved to Cuffley, in Hertfordshire. At the time of National Registration in September 1939, the family were staying with Doris' parents at the Pantiles, Copt Hill. It was noted that Ernest was an air raid warden in Cuffley. The couple later moved to Chesterfield House, 4 Camden Hill, Tunbridge Wells, Kent. Ernest was an active member of the Plymouth Brethren, meeting at York Road, Tunbridge Wells, and edited a Christian newsletter, Words of Help.

Ernest Pettman died on 25 May 1973 in Tunbridge Wells. Doris Pettman subsequently moved to 19 Orchard Glade, Headcorn, Kent, together with her unmarried son Jonathan. Her son Marcus and his wife lived in the same village. Doris died on 25 June 2000.

Ernest and his wife Doris had five children: