As previously stated, we are using Ellen Moody’s 1813-1814 calendar for the main events of Emma, because I don’t see any obvious reason not to.

-The elder Martins married no later than 1788-1789, to have a son who turns twenty-four on June 8, 1813. The father, probably a Robert like his son, is deceased in the present day of the story. The mother is possibly an Elizabeth, like the one daughter of hers who is called by name in the story. The novel gives us a vague impression of her as a kindly, tolerant, industrious woman, fond of Harriet Smith. The son and possibly the daughters can read pretty well, implying that some care has been taken over their education. The Martins are on the upper edge of the tenant farmer class, renting the large Abbey Mill Farm from the Donwell Abbey estate. It’s not clear whether they have an operational mill on their property or the name is just a holdover from the Tudor era. If they were milling flour for the area, I think it would have probably come up somewhere in the book. I don’t see anything in the novel to suggest that Mr. Knightley or his parents were anywhere near as friendly with the elder Martins as Knightley is with young Robert, so I think their acquaintance developed after the death of Old Mr. Martin, with George Knightley trying to be helpful to a younger man taking on a lot of responsibility at a relatively early age.

-Reverend Mr. Bates and Mrs. Bates: Their grandchild is twenty-one, their surviving daughter, Miss Hetty Bates, seems to be in her forties, so we could give them a marriage date around 1773 or a bit earlier. Mr. Bates was the former vicar of Highbury, but doesn’t seem to have had money apart from that, since his family fell on hard times after his death. I imagine him as a chatty, outgoing man, rather like his daughter. His widow is rather deaf and lets her surviving daughter do all the talking, but I have the impression she probably was on the reserved side to start with. Possibly the other daughter was as well.

-Their other daughter, Jane Bates, married Lieutenant Fairfax, infantryman, around 1792-1793, since their daughter Jane Fairfax was born in the latter year. He seems to have died in action around 1796, the same year his wife died of illness. Jane Fairfax lived with the Bateses for a time, before Colonel Campbell, Jane’s father’s former CO, invited her to live with his family and be educated alongside his daughter. Moody puts this around 1802. The Campbells would be Lowland Scots. Their daughter marries into the Anglo-Irish gentry: Mr. Dixon of Baly-craig, whom she met at Weymouth around the time Jane met Frank. The Anglo-Irish gentry were a pretty vile lot, if Jane Austen’s contemporary Maria Edgeworth is to be believed, but somehow the people who have lots of moral indignation to throw at Mansfield Park about the property in Antigua never seem to have much to spare for Emma about Baly-craig. In any case, the Campbells are portrayed as very decent, well-intentioned people who just don’t have quite enough money to do anything more for their foster daughter Jane than feed and house her, now that her education is complete and the Campbell daughter she was chaperoning is married.

-Mr. Weston, formerly Captain Weston, married his first wife, Miss Churchill, no later than the same 1788-1789 timeframe previously mentioned; his son Frank Churchill is described as being twenty-three, so some months younger than Robert Martin. Captain Weston was good-natured, impulsive, and moderately well off. His first wife was charming and devoted to him, but she came from money, was disowned due to her marriage, and had expensive tastes that caused the two of them to live beyond their means…so spectacularly that Mr. Weston bordered on being broke when his first wife died, two years after the birth of Frank. Mr. Weston’s need to repair his fortune, plus the control freak tendencies of his in-laws, resulted in the Churchills raising Frank. The narrator makes some very snide comments about Miss Churchill pursuing Mr. Weston, and her effect on his finances after their marriage, and generally acts like him getting married again to Miss Taylor, a docile, penniless governess to the Woodhouse daughters, is some kind of awesome happy ending for Mr. Weston. (This was in 1813, after a four year acquaintance, for those keeping score.)

–The couple actually raising Frank seem to have been Frank’s maternal uncle and maternal uncle’s wife. The latter, the aunt, is the one who wouldn’t approve of his marriage to the penniless Jane Fairfax. Frank’s general behavior is that of a good-natured person, spoiled in trivialities but denied things he really wanted, to the point where he thinks it pretty routine to get the things he really wants in an underhanded way. Possibly this is his uncle’s way of getting around the aunt as well. The aunt is apparently genuinely ill; she dies towards the end of the book. Compare and contrast this martinet of the sickbed with fragile, charming Mr. Woodhouse, who doesn’t want anything to change, including the marital status of the ladies of Hartwell, but who can always be soothed and wheedled into doing what Emma wants. If it hadn’t been a series of chicken thefts frightening him into accepting his younger daughter’s marriage, it would have been something else.

—You will occasionally find people arguing that Frank might have poisoned the aunt. Although he can be underhanded and is acquainted with at least one apothecary, I think this would take more decisiveness than he really seems capable of. If I were Miss Marple visiting the Churchills at Enscombe, I would look to the uncle, myself.