Hannah Goldie 'Anna' (Eesley) Scoon
also known as Hanna Eesley (the 'Eesleys circa 1900' PowerPoint caption variant); Anna (the everyday family nickname); Mrs. J. B. Scoon of Toronto. Given name in the GEDCOM is Hannah Goldie — the middle name honoring her Scottish-born mother Jennie Goldie.
b. 1863-12-20, Paris, Ontario, Canada
d. 1932-06-20, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (buried Pine Hills Cemetery, Scarborough)
She was the second of the ten Albert Robert Sr Eesley children — born in Paris, Ontario, on 20 December 1863 during the family’s Canadian years, with John Franklin ahead of her by four years. Her given name was Hannah Goldie per Dale Eesley’s FamilySearch tree (ID LBKQ-8R3), the middle name honoring her Scottish-born mother Jennie Goldie of Ayrshire. “Anna” was the everyday nickname — and the form in which her name reaches the present day.
Per William Eesley’s c. 1916 obituary, she and her older brother John Franklin were the first two of the ten children born before their father started moving the family around Michigan to build and operate mills.
The Toronto life
She married J. B. Scoon and made her home in Toronto for the rest of her life. By the time of William’s c. 1916 obituary she was one of four Eesley sisters in Toronto — she as Mrs. Scoon, her sister Jennie as Mrs. Baxter, her sister Bessie as Mrs. Sinclair, plus their bachelor brother Dr. George Henry Eesley the physician. Their parents Albert Robert Sr and Jennie Goldie had also retired and died in Toronto.
Toronto in the 1880s and 1890s — when Hannah would have married — was a city growing rapidly from a colonial Loyalist town into a North American commercial hub. The street grid of what is now downtown Toronto was being filled in. St. James’s Cathedral, Yonge Street, Queen’s Park, the early streetcar lines all date from her young-adult years there. The British loyalty of the city’s institutions was strong; the Scottish-Presbyterian Protestant culture her mother’s family had brought from Ayrshire was a dominant strand of Toronto’s middle-class life. A married Scoon woman in Toronto in the 1890s would likely have been part of that culture: a Presbyterian church congregation, the women’s social and missionary societies, the daily round of housekeeping in a brick downtown house with a small yard and a coal furnace.
She died on 20 June 1932 at age 68 — six months before her younger sister Jennie Baxter (d. 10 January 1935) and four months after their brother William the College Corner miller (d. 24 April 1932). The early 1930s took three of the ten siblings within three years of each other. She was buried at Pine Hills Cemetery, Scarborough, in the eastern part of Toronto.
She appears in the 1899 Eesley family group portrait as “Anna” in the seated row — by then a married Toronto woman of about 36, posed with her parents and siblings at the family’s reunion-portrait moment.
Sources: Dale Eesley / FamilySearch — Hannah Goldie Eesley (LBKQ-8R3); William Eesley obituary, c. 1916; the typed family caption and “Eesleys circa 1900” PowerPoint deck, transmitted by Chuck Eesley 2026.
