Leonard David Eesley

Leonard David Eesley was the eldest of Charles Leonard and Lillie Dale Chenoweth Eesley’s eight children, born 1904 in Geneva, Ohio. He lived to seventy-two and died 1976 in Silver Spring, Maryland. He was the father of Tommy Eesley, the small boy in Aunt Maggie’s deck slide of “Wilbur Chenoweth Eesley with his nephew Tommy at Black Lake, Michigan” around 1933 — and the same young boy who stands beside his grandfather in the c. 1937–1939 group portrait of Charles Leonard with five sons.

In that group portrait he is the figure at the far left — the oldest of the five brothers in the frame, in his early thirties.

Marriage and children

Leonard David married Helen Bernadine Alspach (b. 5 October 1902). Per Bean’s 1985 register they had two sons:

• Thomas Leonard “Tommy” Eesley, b. 1 December 1930 in Columbus, Ohio — the boy in the Black Lake and group-portrait photographs above. He married Alymer E. Crafts (d. 1974) and later Dorothy, with children Amy Helen (1958), Laurie Collene (1962), and Dale Thomas (1965).
• James Michael “Mike” Eesley, b. 26 October 1938 — married Adrienne Woods, with sons Gregory Scott (1968) and Thomas Patrick (1969).

Sources: Mary Eesley Bean, Eesley Family History, 1985 (descendant register, generations IV–VI); family memory.

Portrait, Spring 1929

A studio-lit portrait of Leonard as a young man of about twenty-four — seated in a three-piece suit with a patterned tie, hair combed back, a slim mustache — taken in Spring 1929. It is the archive’s first adult likeness of Charles Leonard’s eldest son, and now the portrait at the top of this page.

With his son Tommy, c. 1932

Leonard, in a beret and sweater, cradling his small son Thomas Leonard “Tommy” Eesley (b. 1 December 1930) on a sunny bank — a candid outdoor frame from about 1932, when Tommy was a toddler. See the father-and-son artifact.

With his brothers c. 1912

A sepia outdoor portrait from Roberta Burnes’s keeping, surfaced June 2026: the three Eesley brothers — Don (left, ~4), Will (middle, ~2), and Len (right, ~8) — standing on a patch of grass c. 1912. One of the earliest frames of any of the three in the archive.