Jean Goldie Eesley

Jean Goldie Eesley was the fifth or sixth child of Charles Leonard and Lillie Dale Chenoweth Eesley — born 28 October 1921 in Grove City, Franklin County, Ohio. She was named for her grandmother — Jeanie Goldie, the Scottish immigrant matriarch on the paternal side. She lived just shy of four years, dying in Columbus on 13 October 1925, fifteen days short of her fourth birthday. She was buried 15 October 1925.

Charlie’s 1965 12th-grade autobiography records the cause as a childhood accident: “My Aunt Jean died from a childhood accident when she was five years old.” The four-year-old age is close to Charlie’s “five-year-old” family memory; the cause Charlie gives is the documentary record this archive has.

The car-crash story — Roberta Burnes, June 2026

The specific childhood accident now has a name and a clinical course. In a June 2026 email, Roberta Burnes (Helen Eesley Burnes’s daughter) passed on the version her mother — Jean’s younger sister, born 21 months before Jean’s death — had carried across the rest of her life:

Mom also said that Aunt Ota treated Mom’s sister, Aunt Jean, after she was thrown from their vehicle during a car crash. According to that story, Jean hit the pavement and suffered a concussion. The family noted that “everything seemed fine” with Jean at first, but later that night she passed away, likely from a blood clot in her brain.

The clinical picture is consistent with what was then known as delayed-onset epidural or subdural hematoma: a young child thrown from an open-bodied automobile in a 1925 collision, striking the pavement, appearing stable for several hours, then deteriorating overnight as the brain bleed accumulated. The 1920s did not have the imaging or surgical capability to intervene. Her aunt Dr. Scioto “Aunt Ota” Chenoweth Smith — Jean’s maternal aunt and the family physician — did the clinical work of treating her after the crash, and presumably delivered the prognosis to her sister Lillie Dale. Helen, born twenty-one months earlier in January 1924, was too young to remember Jean firsthand; the car-crash story Helen passed down to Roberta came from Lillie Dale.

The Jean-and-Ota and Helen-and-Ota threads place Aunt Ota at two of the most charged family-medical moments of the 1920s: she delivered Helen on 16 January 1924 and treated Jean’s October 1925 death — the close-spaced new-life-and-lost-life events Lillie Dale’s household lived through in those twenty-one months. The accident that took Jean is what the Mary-Bean-1985-register “died at 12” and the Charlie-1965-autobiography “died from a childhood accident at five” references both come from. The car crash is the source story.

The dates — 28 October 1921 to 13 October 1925

Three different family sources gave three different birth-year readings across the decades:

• Mary Bean’s 1985 Eesley Family History gave her as “b. Oct. 28, 1912, Grove City Ohio. d. died 1924, Columbus Ohio” — making her 12 at death.
• The c. 1970s Eesley reunion-portrait caption gave her as “1926–1930” (age 4).
• Dale’s GEDCOM (FS LB4Y-P86) gives her as 28 October 1921 to 13 October 1925 (age 4).

The GEDCOM dates are now confirmed by the primary record. Jean’s Ohio death certificate (Franklin County, 1925) gives her date of birth as 28 October, her birthplace as Grove City, and her age at death as 3 years, 11 months, and 15 days — which counts back from her 13 October 1925 death to a birth on 28 October 1921, matching the GEDCOM exactly and settling the date against the two later misreadings. Jean was born October 1921 and died in October 1925 at age four, fifteen days short of her fourth birthday. She was Helen’s older sister by two years and three months (Helen b. 16 January 1924). Charlie’s 1965 autobiography line — “died from a childhood accident when she was five years old” — is the family-memory close-paraphrase of the actual age-four-at-death.

She is the predeceased sister Will’s 1986 obituary refers to.

The toddler-in-overalls photograph — Jean Goldie Eesley (resolved, 2026)

The only known solo photograph of Jean is one Roberta Burnes printed in high school from negatives in her mother Helen’s papers: a standing toddler in dark overalls, with Aunt Mary Eesley Bean holding a baby to one side. With Jean’s birth confirmed as 28 October 1921, the standing toddler is Jean and the baby is Helen (b. January 1924). The photograph sits on Helen’s page.

Sources: Jean Eesley, Ohio Certificate of Death, Franklin County, 1925 (b. 28 October, Grove City; age 3y 11m 15d at death) — FamilySearch, ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-6SCS-BKD, image 494 of 3121, Image Group 004258152 (Ohio Historical Society, Columbus); Dale Eesley GEDCOM (FamilySearch LB4Y-P86); Mary Eesley Bean, Eesley Family History, 1985; Roberta Burnes, June 2026.