Hannah Eesley (Smith)

Hannah Eesley was born in December 1819 and christened on 27 December 1819 at Charlecote, Warwickshire — eldest daughter of John Eesley (then twenty) and Susannah Bubb (then twenty-three; she had given birth almost exactly seven months after their 10 May 1819 marriage). Hannah was one of at least eleven children of that marriage; her famous brother was Albert Robert Eesley, the future Stratford-on-Avon-born teacher-turned-miller emigrant to Canada.

Per the GEDCOM, she married Thomas Smith at St Mary’s, Warwick on 23 January 1844 — age twenty-four. She took the Smith name from that marriage onward.

The name conflation

She is one of the two Hannahs at the root of the family’s longest-standing name confusion. Her mother Susannah Bubb was recorded by Mary Eesley Bean in the 1985 register as “Hannah Bubb” — almost certainly because the family carried two Hannahs in adjacent generations (mother and daughter), and the daughter’s name reached Bean’s source while the mother’s actual baptismal name was lost. The Oxford library volunteer working from Charlecote parish records in 2018 settled the mother’s name as Susannah; the GEDCOM and FamilySearch confirm; the daughter is preserved here, on this page, as one of two Hannahs — not the same person as her mother.

The wet-nurse story

A substantial biographical narrative has survived in family memory and was transmitted by Chuck in 2026:

Hannah was wet-nurse to the family of the Lord Mayor of London and saved enough money to help get the family to the USA in 1858. They had a farm near Elizabeth, New Jersey. They later moved to Newark, NJ where they operated a bakery. Hannah married a second time at age 75 to a childhood sweetheart.

Whether this Hannah is the subject of the story, or her mother Susannah, is the structural question this page sits inside. Two readings:

• Hannah Eesley (this page) as the wet-nurse. She is the right age (in her twenties and thirties through the 1840s) for a wet-nursing role in mid-Victorian London. The 1858 emigration would put her at 39. But the GEDCOM has her husband as Thomas Smith, not a John — so the “John and Hannah had seven children” line in Chuck’s narrative would not apply to this Hannah. Unless the GEDCOM’s husband is wrong, or Bean’s “John” is wrong, this reading does not fit cleanly.
• Susannah Bubb (the mother) as the wet-nurse, transmitted through Bean’s “Hannah” name. Susannah married John Eesley in 1819 and bore eleven children through 1842, the youngest of whom (Henry) would be sixteen at the 1858 emigration. Susannah herself would be sixty-two in 1858 — older than a typical emigrant, but plausible if family circumstances drove the move (John Sr’s failing milling work; the family’s surplus children needing land in the U.S.). The 75-year-old remarriage would have happened in 1871 — one year after John Sr’s documented 1870 death. The “John and Hannah” parental framing fits.

The second reading is the more parsimonious fit to all the data. The narrative most likely belongs to her mother, Susannah Bubb, and is now placed there. This Hannah is recorded separately, on this page, as the daughter whose name set the conflation in motion.

Open

• Did this Hannah and Thomas Smith have children? Their children would be Eesley grandchildren on this side of the family. Not yet pursued in this archive.
• Did she emigrate with the rest of the family in 1858? If so, she would have been thirty-nine, possibly already widowed (Thomas Smith’s death year not given in the GEDCOM). Newark NJ city directories would resolve this.

Sources: Dale Eesley / FamilySearch — Hannah Eesley (MJV2-M5T); GEDCOM marriage entry 23 January 1844, St Mary’s Warwick.