I need some help with this case from Yorkshire.

All below dates have are in the Gregorian calendar.

Francis Knaggs, who died at Sleights, was buried in 1828 in near-by Ugglebarnby at the claimed age of 101.

There is only one matching baptism, being the one recorded at Glaisdale on 2 March 1728.

However, since a hunch cannot prove itself without evidence, we shall investigate.

Francis appears in the register of the neighboring parish of Eskdaleside, where he had 4 children baptised.

• John (bapt 24 Nov 1770 in Eskdaleside - buried 1770 in Whitby)
• Elizabeth (bapt 24 Sept 1773 in Eskdaleside)
• Margaret (bapt 26 Feb 1776 in Eskdaleside)
• Francis (bapt 29 May 1780 in Eskdaleside - buried 1780 in Eskdaleside)

From the baptism of the younger Francis, we learn that Mrs. Knaggs's name was Margaret.

There is a burial record in Ugglebarnby from 1816 for a 77-year-old Margaret Knaggs of Sleights, which confirms that the baptisms are a match.

Using the above information, we find that Francis married Margaret Jowsey on 5 December 1769 in Whitby; they were both residing in the city at the time.

Although there was a Francis Knaggs baptized at Whitby in 1738, he cannot not be same person as the Sleights centenarian.

I am certain that Francis and Margaret were not born in Whitby, and only resided there for a time so they could marry by banns.

To start, it just would not make sense for Francis to not settle his family in Whitby. Why raise a family in a small rural parish if one is already established in a large town?

Clearly, he was already established elsewhere, in this case the small parish of Eskdaleside.

Furthermore, there was a Jowsey family living in Eskdaleside by the 1730s; the parents married in 1735 and had their first known child in late 1739. Just enough space to fit in Margaret's birth.

Although Margaret is absent from the Eskdaleside baptism register, she does not appear in Whitby prior to her marriage.

It is very unlikely that she just slipped through the cracks in an established town such as Whitby.

Therefore, both Francis and Margaret must have born outside of Whitby, the former somewhere along the River Esk and the latter in Eskdaleside. With this established, we can look for earlier documents.

In Egton, a town near the River Esk between Glaisdale and Eskdaleside, Francis married Jane Cook on 28 November 1747.

They had two sons, documented only in Egton:

• Francis (bapt 2 Jun 1750 - buried 10 Aug 1809)
• John (bapt 25 May 1753 - buried 30 May 1754)

Jane was buried in Egton on 23 April 1754, just one week before her son John.

Given that Francis Knaggs not only married in the 1740s but also lived in a town near Glaisdale in his youth, it is indisputable that he was baptized on 2 March 1728 in Glaisdale and buried sometime in 1828 at Ugglebarnby, aged at least 99 years.

The only issue is that we don't know when exactly he was buried, so there is a chance he died at 99.

Otherwise, his case is relatively solid.

Here is revised research for Francis Knagg's case.

• Early-life documentation

The parents of the Francis Knaggs born at Glaisdale were John Knaggs of Danby and Alice Brown, who married 8 December 1723 at Easington in Cleveland. They had 3 children, all of whom are recorded in the Danby parish register as having been baptized in Glaisdale.

• John on 18 September 1724, buried 22 December 1724 in Danby
• Francis on 2 March 1728
• John on 13 July 1731.

Alice was buried in Danby 11 July 1732. John Sr. was buried there 1 February 1739; he was recorded as a householder.

Efforts to locate baptism records for John Sr. and Alice have been unsuccessful.

• Francis Knaggs of Egton

I have determined that the Francis Knaggs documented in Egton is actually an uncle of some degree to the Francis Knaggs of Glaisdale.

Francis Knaggs of Egton was baptized 16 March 1698 in Glaisdale as a son of Leonard Knaggs (d. 1729), and buried 11 April 1773 in Egton.

The Cook family of Egton is documented to have had a preference for marrying after 30 with similarly-aged people; the most important example is Jane's sister Ann, who married at 41 with 46-year-old John Oxley. Because there was only one Cook family residing in Egton during the 18th century, there is no chance of confusion.

Here is the relevant section of the Cook family tree (all below events were in Egton, and all below dates have been amended to the Gregorian calendar).

George Cook (bapt 31 October 1666 - 19 May 1747) + Jane Pearson, married 14 December 1698.

George (bapt 20 September 1699 - bur 3 April 1741):

• George (bapt 13 September 1731)
• Richard (bapt 13 June 1733)
• Matthew (bapt 3 November 1736)
• Mary (bapt 3 November 1740)

Francis (bapt 12 June 1700):

• Francis (bapt 7 December 1732)
• Thomas (bapt 20 November 1735)
• Mary (bapt 1 October 1738)
• Jane (bapt 10 June 1743)

Matthew (bapt 12 August 1703):

• Elizabeth (bapt 14 April 1727)
• Matthew (bapt 7 January 1737 - bur 23 April 1747)

Ann (bapt 25 October 1705 - bur 9 March 1770):

married Joseph Oxley (bapt 12 April 1700 - bur 2 March 1776) on 24 January 1747.

Jane (bapt 22 April 1708 - bur 23 April 1754):

married Francis Knaggs (bapt 16 March 1698 - bur 11 April 1773)

• Francis Jr. (bapt 1 June 1750 - bur 10 August 1809)
• John (bapt 25 May 1753 - bur 30 May 1754)

Mary (bapt 29 January 1713):

possibly married Thomas Jackson (bapt 25 January 1722) on 7 February 1757.

Because the Cook family is demonstrated as having a preference for marrying after the age of 30 with similarly-aged spouses and that there is a contemporary Francis Knaggs who cleanly matches the marriage pattern seen in the Cook family, it is implausible for the Francis Knaggs born in 1728 to have married in 1747, and thus cannot be the man buried in 1773.

• 1738 VS 1743

On 4 January 1773 in Kirkbymoorside, 30-year-old Francis Knaggs of Whitby married 40-year-old Elizabeth Bowes of Kirkbymoorside.

Elizabeth was buried 25 April 1774 in Kirkbymoorside; her husband, who is named as Francis in the burial record, has no later appearances. Elizabeth was likely baptized 29 May 1730 in Sinnington, a small neighboring parish, but there are two matching baptisms for her husband:

One from 13 May 1738 in Whitby and the other 10 November 1743 in Lythe.

The former was the son of John (1694 - 1752) and Elizabeth (d. 1776) Knaggs, and all but one of his siblings were born in Whitby.

William (1722-[1743?]), George (1723 - 1723[sic]), Richard (1724-[1760?]), Jane (1727[born in Sneaton]), George (1730-1800), Elizabeth Martin (1732-1819), Thomas (1735), and Miles (1743-1794).

All of the relatives of this Francis are documented as lifelong residents of Whitby, so it can be said that his family was well-established in the town. Therefore, he would have no real reason to trade the lucrative opportunities of the urban life he was born into for a simple rural existence. Moreover, since at least two of his siblings are unaccounted for in the Whitby burial register, an early death for this Francis cannot be discounted. Therefore, because this Francis Knaggs is untraceable after his baptism despite never having a reason to leave his hometown then he must have died at a young age; consequently, he can be ruled out.

The latter Francis Knaggs was the second of at least five children born to Francis (c.1717 - bur 15 January 1802) and Elizabeth (c.1712[?] - 6 November 1803) Knaggs:

• Elizabeth Topcliffe (bapt 18 December 1740 in Lythe - bur 1778 in Whitby) [married in 1764 in Lythe]
• Esther Myres (bapt 27 April 1750 in Lythe - bur 6 May 1832 in Whitby) [had a daughter named Alice born 11 October 1773 and buried in 1776 in Whitby; married in 1784 in Whitby]
• Hannah Gibson (bapt 25 June 1752 in Lythe - bur 12 February 1837 in Lythe) [married in 1777 in Whitby]
• Sarah Rigg (bapt 11 May 1755 in Lythe - bur 12 May 1838 in Lythe) [had a daughter named Anne Saunderson born 1 May 1773 in Whitby; married in 1784 in Whitby]

Firstly, there is no matching burial record to be found in neither Whitby nor Lythe for the younger Francis, so he cannot be dismissed. Moreover, since his sisters are proven to have moved to Whitby by the mid-1770s, it stands to reason that he would have joined them; this, combined with the negation of the Francis Knaggs born in Whitby, leaves only the Francis from Lythe as a candidate for the man who married in 1773.

Therefore, since the Francis Knaggs born at Whitby in 1738 died young and the one born at Lythe in 1743 married in 1773, and the alleged centenarian of Sleights was married from 1769 to 1816, then the aged man who died in 1828 cannot be anyone else but the infant baptized at Glaisdale in 1728.

PS: Elizabeth Knaggs (bapt 1773) was buried at Sleights in 1837, and Margaret Knaggs (bapt 1776) was buried at Egton in 1827 and had two daughters: Ann (bapt 14 September 1806 in Eskdaleside) and Eliza Dodd (bapt 2 July 1813 in Eskdaleside). Also, the exact date of Francis Knaggs's burial is still unknown.

The one that has interested me the last couple of years is Ganni Schembri. I'm wondering if he was really 111 (and would be the first recorded supercentenarian). If so, he would have held the record for OLP in Malta for 155 years (until Maria Farrugia broke it in 2023).

Hi! Could someone used to English records help me to resolve this case?

I'm looking for the baptism of Samuel Weddell, allegedly born in London on 29 May 1777 and who died in Poitiers, France, on 3 April 1878 at the claimed age of 100.

He was the son of Samuel Weddell and Sibella Clark, married in London on 26 November 1776.

He married Charlotte Walker (d. 1853 in Paris) in Carlton Colville on 3 April 1809 and had at least 3 children baptised in Rodborough in 1814, 1816 and 1819 (all of them died in France, the third was the botanist Hugh Algernon Weddell 1819-1877).

Although he claimed to be born on 29 May 1777, he could have been younger. Indeed, he was only "83" in the 1866 census of Poitiers and "92" in the 1872 census, making him born in the 1780s instead.

I was unable to find any trace of his baptism on Familysearch.

Samuel was born on 21 May 1788; someone already put together his branch of his family tree. Records for London can be tricky to find on FamilySearch.

Thank you very much Fish!

Yeah I don't understand why the record didn't appear when I searched for it, but at least the mystery is solved.

You're welcome, Guillaume!

When records for London don't appear, it's usually because of changes in the agreements that allowed for FamilySearch to have them online. This can be bypassed by looking for individual profiles, as baptisms often have profiles attached to them.