My great-great-great-grandfather, we believe, came over from Ireland to the Isle of Man to find work. Cornelius Murphey was born in Douglas in the parish of St George around 1763,  where he grew up and met Jane Gelling and they married in the old church of Kirk Braddon in Douglas in June 1787 where the parish  register show Cornelius as a Mariner.
Cornelius and Jane had two sons: Cornelius Charles (christened May 1789 in the Douglas parish of St George) and William (baptised Christmas day 1791 also in St George).

William learnt the trade of a skilled carpenter, and travelled over the Isle of Man as a journeyman carpenter. He married Jemima Ann Sanham and they had two children Ethel, and a while later, Percival (or Percy) born in 1892. Sadly Jemima died in 1904, aged 44, so when he was only 12, Percy went to live with his older sister Ethel and her husband Bert Carpenter in Catford, London.  In time Ethel and Bert Carpenter’s had four children of their own, Kathleen, Peggy (circa 1922), Leon (circa 1925), and Vera (circa 1928).

When Percy grew older, he went into service as a ‘valet’ or ‘gentleman’s gentleman’ with a family called Montifiore - he was nicknamed “D’Arcy” because he wore a monocle and was very well spoken. 
It was the ‘family chauffer’ Stanley Levy who introduced Percy to his little sister Gladys Mary Victoria Levy, and for the young girl it was reputedly ‘love at first sight’.
 

During the Great War Percy followed his employer and chauffer to fight in the trenches with the 16th London Regiment (the Queens Westminster Rifles). Percy and Stanley’s employer was killed in action, and after being gassed, by the British, Percy and Stanley Levy went to Egypt with the Royal Flying Corps and flew the French-built plane the Neiuport Serat, the equivalent of the Sopwith Camel.
 

After the War Percy moved to Hungerford where he married Gladys Levy in July 1921 and was offered a good position as valet to one of the “Rothchild's”, but he turned it down as he did not want to live overseas in Austria.

Not wanting to go abroad, instead he took work with the Great Western Railway as a station porter in Newport in South Wales, and later as station master in Bristol at Ashton Gate station.  When any family visited his station Percy would give his nieces and nephews a 'penny’ to spend in the platform ‘1d’ chocolate-bar machine. 

Since being 'gassed', Percy was never of good health and in 1946 suffered a mild heart attack.  Percy’s dream was to run a guest-house on the sea-front, so he and his family moved to Weymouth.  On arriving there, Percy was a more than little concerned as he was driving downhill towards the town that there were queues of traffic driving uphill to get out !

After settling, Percy was initially still with the railways as a guard at Portland Station, but later he carried out his dream and bought a large guest-house in Greenhill, backing onto the sea-front.  He and Gladys named the house “Rossmore” after their first home in Hungerford in Berkshire.

Unfortunately after running the guesthouse for little more than a year, in the September of 1947, Percy suffered another heart attack and died at the age of 55.

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