John Eesley

John Eesley was baptized at Hanwell, Oxfordshire, in 1799 (the only baptism for Joseph and Frances Eesley recorded there) and married Susan Babbs at Charlecote, Warwickshire, on 10 May 1819. The 1851 census placed him at Rother Street in Old Stratford, age 51, a journeyman miller, with Susan (age 50, born Charlecote, working) and three sons at home: William (17), Albert (11), and Henry (8), plus a granddaughter Jane (9). The 1841 census had recorded a larger household in Old Stratford, including older children (Mary 20, Eydith 15, an elder son aged 11, John 2, William 7, George 5, Albert 1, and Jane one month old) — Albert is the one whose name carries forward across the Atlantic.

His occupation as a miller is not incidental: the trade ran through the line and across the Atlantic. Albert Robert went to Scotland to work in the Goldie flour mill. John F. Eesley — almost certainly the “John” who appears as age 2 in the 1841 census and has no entry by 1851 because he had left the household — went to America, eventually founding the J. F. Eesley Milling Co. flour mill in Plainwell, Michigan, now on the National Register of Historic Places. What looks, in any single generation, like an emigration is, read down the line, three journeyman millers following the same trade — one to Scotland, one to America, one staying home.

Spellings vary in the records: “Eesley” in parish registers, “Easley” in the census-taker’s hand. The notes preserve both.