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.