Joseph Eesley

Joseph Eesley was born and christened 6 December 1764 in Banbury, Oxfordshire, and died seventy-two years later in the same town, in 1837. He married Frances “Fanny” Ayris of Horley at Bloxham on 16 April 1787 — the entry the Oxford library volunteer in 2018 had marked with a red question mark, and which Dale’s tree confirms as the right one.

Joseph and Frances had at least four children: William (bp. 19 August 1787, only months after the wedding), Hannah (bp. 23 May 1790), Mary (bp. 25 December 1794), and John Eesley (bp. January 1799 at Hanwell) — the journeyman miller whose marriage to Susannah Bubb is the next generation’s hinge.

His baptism and parents — St Mary’s, Banbury, 1764

The Banbury St Mary’s baptism register pushes the line back further. Joseph’s entry, in December 1764, reads: “Joseph, Son of William Eesley, Lab[ourer], & Mary his Wife, bap[tized] 6th [day].” His parents were William Eesley (1731–1777), a Banbury laborer, and Mary Simkins, who had married at this same St Mary’s on 12 December 1758. William was himself baptized at St Mary’s Banbury in 1731, the son of Thomas Eesley (1700–1750) — carrying the documented Eesley line back to the turn of the eighteenth century, all of it rooted at Banbury.

The Banbury St Mary’s parish register, open to 1761–1765 — the source record retrieved for Joseph, whose baptism falls in December 1764. (Oxfordshire Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538–1812.)

St Mary’s, Banbury, where Joseph was baptized on 6 December 1764 — photographed on the family’s England pilgrimage. (His son John was baptized a generation later four miles west at Hanwell.) Note: the present rotunda-towered building was rebuilt 1790–1797, so the church Joseph was actually christened in was the medieval St Mary’s that stood on this site until its demolition; this is its neoclassical successor on the same ground.

Source: Dale Eesley / FamilySearch — Joseph Eesley (M7YN-TP5); Banbury St Mary’s parish baptism register, December 1764 (Oxfordshire Church of England Baptisms, 1538–1812).