ancestor-sketch
Eesley Line Research Notes — Oxford Public Library
Three handwritten notebook pages compiled by a volunteer genealogist at the Oxford public library during Chuck and Lijie's 2018 visit, tracing the Eesley line backward from the 1851 Stratford-on-Avon census into 17th- and 18th-century Oxfordshire parish registers — plus a photograph of the source document itself: the 1799 Hanwell baptism register naming John as son of Joseph and Frances.
These are the working notes a volunteer at the Oxford public library made on the day Chuck and Lijie walked in. They have the texture of real archive work — cross-referenced parish baptisms, marriages and burials, the 1841 and 1851 censuses for Old Stratford, the Victoria County History, Jackson’s Oxford Journal, all weighed against one another. They settle the matriarch (Susan Babbs of Charlecote, not “Hannah Bubb”) and the bridge generation (Joseph and Frances Eesley of Hanwell) and they leave the next layer up properly unresolved.
What the notes settle
John Eesley (1799 bap. Hanwell – 1870) married Susan Babbs at Charlecote on 10 May 1819. The 1851 census places him at Rother Street in Old Stratford, age 51, a journeyman miller, with Susan (50, born Charlecote, “works”) and three sons at home — William 17, Albert 11, Henry 8 — plus a granddaughter Jane, 9. The 1841 census records a larger household: Mary 20, Eydith 15, an elder son 11, John 2, William 7, George 5, Albert 1, Jane one month. Albert is the emigrant; the rest stay home.
Joseph and Frances Eesley are John’s parents, established by the Hanwell baptism register, which records only one baptism for this couple in Hanwell — John’s, in 1799. Earlier baptisms in the Joseph-and-Frances line are at Bourton: William 1787 (19 Aug), Hannah 1790 (23 May), Mary 1794 (25 Dec), John 1799 (Jan 6). The note “Joseph (John) — written as John in SS, is Joseph in PR” records the transcription ambiguity — Joseph in the parish register, John in the Stratford Society register — which the volunteer treats as settled in favor of Joseph.
A separate Hannah Eesley, daughter of John and Susannah, was baptized at Hanwell on 11 November 1819 and (also) at Charlecote on 27 December 1819 — the double baptism is what flagged the Hanwell/Charlecote families as the same family.
What the notes leave open
The generation before Joseph remains contested. The volunteer collected, but did not assign:
- Burials at Hanwell that imply the right birth years: Francis Easley aged 73 in 1829 (born ~1756), Joseph aged 69 in 1833 (born ~1764), an un-aged William buried Hanwell 1801. Any of these could be Joseph’s parent.
- Marriages with William as groom spanning forty years and three counties: William m. Ann Pain at Bloxham (18 Oct 1716); William m. Mary Pennington at Ox St Aldate (11 Jan 1722); William m. Swannah Watts ?Banbury (6 Nov 1743); William m. Mary Simpkins at Banbury (12 Dec 1758); William Esley m. Mary Croster of Ox St Giles (28 June 1788). The note “William born Ox St Aldate son of Thomas baptized 1731 might be of age to be 2nd William above but not 1st” attempts the reconciliation.
- A possible Joseph of Bourton who married Fanny Ayns at Bloxham 16 April 1787, question-marked in red.
- Earliest record: Anne and Maria, daughters of Walter and Ellin of Shiplake, baptized 1675 and 1681. Some in Cholsey and Piddington before the Ox St Aldate family turns up; Thomas’s son Thomas baptized 1723.
- Source citation for further work: VCH vol. 10, British History Online —
british-history.ac.uk/VCH/oxon/10— and Jackson’s Oxford Journal index 1791–1800, where a William Eesley of Oxford is referenced 1 March, 26 April, and 10 May 1800.
These candidates are preserved in this document and intentionally not promoted to people entries until a confirming record ties them in.
Provenance
Three notebook pages, written in pencil and ballpoint, by a volunteer library genealogist whose name was not recorded — anonymous in the best library tradition. The volunteer worked through the records while Chuck and Lijie sat at the table. The notebook itself is in Chuck’s keeping.
The smoking gun
The first image is not from the notebook at all — it’s the source document the volunteer was citing: page 12 of 49 of the Hanwell parish register, Oxfordshire, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials 1538–1812, photographed off the Ancestry library subscription on the library terminal. The entry for 1799 reads:
“John, Son of Joseph & Frances Eesly, Jan’y 6.”
That single line is what wires the chain together: it ties John Eesley (the 1851 Stratford miller) to Joseph and Frances Eesley as his parents, and resolves the long-standing “Hannah Bubb” misattribution in the family memory. Everything in the three notebook pages that follow is the volunteer reading outward from that one entry.
Scans
