Back on Track

It has been far too long since the last post.   Last fall I started adding my Palin Guru's branch to the tree.  I have only now just finished adding that line and I know there are many holes that need to be filled.  Those gaps of information nag at me.  Not just on the new line, but the entire site.   Did the women marry and I cant find the marriage or did the men or women immigrate and if so where?  What happened to them?  I decided today to get back on track and start filling some of these gaps.


The first one that jumped out at me was a Sarah Palin born in 1901 in Nantwich area to a William Palin and Elizabeth Yap.  We have Sarah in the 1901 census and the 1911 census and then I lose site  of her.  I searched for a marriage record and there was nothing conclusive and no date of death could be found either. 

Definitely not a great start.

Could she be with a sibling?  Sarah had an older sister called Nanny.   Again no marriage found for Nanny , no immigration listing and no date of death either.  I was ready to through in the towel!!!!

Nanny is a very unusual name for a woman.   What if I hunted for Nanny in the 1939 Registry using only her first name and year of birth.   BINGO!

Could this Nanny Challinor be our Nanny Palin.  There's a daughter listed, Eva Challinor that was born in 1912.  I quickly went to hunt for Eva's birth records praying that it would show the mother's last name and it did!  Palin was the mother's maiden name.  That still is not enough proof!

I went to search for a marriage record for William Challinor and sure enough one was found for 1912 in Nantwich district to Annie Palin.   No wonder I could not find a marriage record for a Nanny Palin.   They listed her name as Annie!

Then I went searching for  death records for Nanny Challinor  and  found that with a bit of a surprise.  She was 100 years old when she died.

Living to 100 is not unusual but it really is not that common.  So then I did a google search for Nanny Challinor.  I love it when you stumble upon a great resource.   The proverbial needle in the haystack!

For anyone searching for graves in the United Kingdom, there are some common known sites but finding one like this is the icing on the cake!

Martin and Claire Nicholson's Cemetery Project

On their site they have written "The project started off in October 2008 with the two of us concentrating on recording the graves of people who reached the age of at least 100 years. We soon discovered that we were finding other memorials that were of particular interest or rarity and we decided that these too deserved to be recorded for posterity. "  And as of "September 2nd 2017 - The site is now 1189 pages"

Thanks and Kudos to Martin and Claire for having such a great site and sharing it with the world!

You can find Nanny Palin in the family tree here.