Dale Eesley + Thelma Haughn Marriage License — Franklin County, Ohio, 1927

The Ohio Marriage License Application + Marriage Certificate for Dale Dudley Eesley and Thelma G. Haughn, filed in Franklin County, Ohio in 1927 — the documentary record of the wedding that closed Dale’s last twelve years before his drowning at Black Lake on 14 July 1939.

What the document records

The scan is a single Franklin County Probate Court form — Marriage License Application No. 79220 — combining the application, the license issuance, and the marriage certificate on one register page.

The application section (top) is the older format used by Ohio probate courts in the 1920s: pre-printed text with handwritten fill-ins for the names, ages, residences, places of birth, occupations, parents, and prior-marriage status of bride and groom. The marriage certificate section (bottom) records the formal solemnization.

The key fields:

• Groom: “Dale D. Eesley” — age 21, of Pleasant Township, Ohio — place of birth: Lebanon (probably Lebanon, Ohio); occupation: mill operator (his father Charles Leonard’s trade); father’s name: C. L. Eesley; mother’s maiden name: Lillie Chenoweth; not previously married.
• Bride: “Thelma G. Haughn” — age 21, of Grove City, Ohio — place of birth: Grove City; occupation: bookkeeper; father’s name: Lloyd Haughn; mother’s maiden name: Mary Hughes; not previously married.
• License: Issued 9 August 1927, granted 15 October 1927.
• Marriage solemnized: 15 November 1927 by N. V. Lechler.
• Filed and recorded: 16 November 1927.

Why the document matters

The license settles three pieces of family record that had been carried only in oral memory or absent from the archive:

1. Thelma’s maiden name and middle initial. Earlier family reading had given her as “Thelma Z. Haughn”; the bridal-name line on the marriage certificate reads “Thelma G. Haughn,” and the middle-initial G is the one that survives in the documentary record. The Z reading was a misreading of the G.
2. The marriage date. The 15 November 1927 solemnization date is now the date of record — Dale and Thelma were married eleven and a half years before Dale’s drowning at Black Lake on 14 July 1939.
3. Thelma’s occupation. “Bookkeeper” — a clerical trade that placed her in the small group of working professional women in 1920s Grove City. The class detail flowed into how the marriage was carried in family memory.

The document also records the household into which Thelma married. Dale was the second of Charles Leonard and Lillie Dale’s eight children — the older brother of Will Eesley (Chuck’s grandfather), and the older brother of Lyle (Cabanatuan, 1942) and Helen (b. 1924, who would carry the chocolate-across-the-lake guilt for sixty-one years).

How the record surfaced

The license was located by Roberta Burnes Walker in June 2026 while she was searching the Ohio County Marriage Records on Ancestry.com. The fact of Dale’s marriage to Thelma had been carried in the family across the next generations — Helen’s eldest daughter Barb knew Thelma was their aunt, while her younger sisters Roberta and Katie grew up knowing Thelma only as “a friend of the family” — but the documentary record of the marriage itself had not previously reached this archive. Roberta’s surfacing of the license is what fixed the marriage into the documented record.

Source: Ohio County Marriage Records 1774-1993, Franklin County, Marriage License Application No. 79220, via FamilySearch (ark:/61903/3:1:9392-S59M-MH, image 699 of 861). Surfaced by Roberta Burnes Walker, June 2026.