Lillie Dale (Chenoweth) Eesley

Lillie Dale Chenoweth was born August 9, 1877. She married Charles Leonard Eesley on Wednesday morning, 9 September 1903 at the Methodist Episcopal Church in Harrisburg, Ohio — the engraved wedding invitation survives in Roberta Burnes Walker’s family album, naming her parents formally as “Mr. and Mrs. J. Hill Chenoweth” and the bride herself as “Lilly Dale.” She and Charles Leonard raised eight children together in Geneva, Lebanon, Shelby, Grove City, and Columbus Ohio (with one daughter, Mary, born in Shelby, Michigan during a Michigan stay). She outlived three of her children: Jean Goldie died at four in 1925, Dale at thirty-two in 1939, and Lyle at twenty-five in 1942 at a Japanese POW camp.

Lillie Dale as a child, c. 1881–1884

A tintype of Lillie Dale as a small child — perhaps four to seven years old — arrived in this archive in June 2026, transmitted by her granddaughter Roberta Burnes from the Chenoweth family album. The photograph shows her seated against a painted-floral studio backdrop, in a pale dress with dark stockings, leaning her arm against the rolled top of a studio chair, holding what appears to be a small object (possibly a flower) in her lap. Her hair is short and dark, her expression solemn in the way late-nineteenth-century child portraits required.

The tintype process and the decorative oval mount place the photograph in the early-to-mid 1880s — Lillie would have been a small child in Franklin County, Ohio, decades before she would marry Charles Leonard Eesley, become the Chenoweth matriarch of the Eesley line, and outlive three of her eight children. The Ohio State music years are still ahead of her. So is everything else.

It is among the earliest photographs of any direct Eesley-line ancestor in this archive.

Lillie Dale in her wedding dress, c. 1904

A second portrait of Lillie Dale arrived in this archive in June 2026, also from Roberta’s keeping. She stands in a full-length wedding dress — high neck, gathered bodice, long bell sleeves, a long sweeping skirt, a sheer veil descending past the back of the dress to the floor, a small bouquet held in white-gloved hands. The photograph is a studio frame against a plain dark backdrop, the kind of formal bridal portrait taken in early-1900s portrait studios. Per Roberta, “this picture was taken a year after her wedding. I can’t recall why there was a delay.”

Lillie Dale was twenty-six or twenty-seven when this portrait was taken. The reason for the year-long delay between the wedding and this formal bridal portrait is an open family question. The image is, regardless, the only one of her in bridal dress that the archive carries.

Lillie Dale and her brother Dwight, c. 1890s

A third Roberta-keeping portrait shows young Lillie Dale together with her brother Dwight Chenoweth — two teenagers or young adults, Lillie on the left with her dark hair pulled up and a dark high-collar bodice, Dwight on the right in suit and tie. The image is a small studio frame, edge-stained, the kind of double-portrait two siblings would have sat for around the time one of them was leaving home.

The portrait places Dwight Kennedy Chenoweth (1880-1957, d. Biloxi, Mississippi) — Lillie Dale’s youngest brother and the fifth and last of the Joseph Hill + Mary Ohio Timmons Chenoweth children.

Lillie Dale’s four siblings

Per Roberta Burnes Walker’s reconstruction from Aunt Mary Eesley Bean’s research papers (June 2026), Lillie Dale was the fourth of five Chenoweth children of Joseph Hill + Mary Ohio Timmons, in order of birth:

1. Howard Glen Chenoweth — eldest brother (not yet a person page)
2. Elsie Chenoweth Borror — older sister; married Jonas Borror; the c. 1905-1910 family-of-four portrait from Roberta surfaces her in this archive June 2026
3. Scioto Mafry Chenoweth (1871-1930) — older sister, the Maggie’s-deck “first woman MD” figure
4. Lillie Dale Chenoweth Eesley (1877-1970) — this page
5. Dwight Kennedy Chenoweth (1880-1957) — youngest brother, the Dwight of the c. 1890s diptych above

Music at Ohio State

Charlie Eesley’s 12th-grade autobiography (c. 1964–1965) carries one of the most evocative details about her early life. Charlie’s grandson-view:

“Grandmother, Miss Lilly Chenoweth, was one of four children. Her father was a prosperous farmer who was highly respected in the community. She studied music at Ohio State University when the campus was barely more than a cornfield.”

Lillie Dale studied music at Ohio State University in the late 1890s, when the university (founded 1870 as the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College) was still small enough that “the campus was barely more than a cornfield.” The OSU campus was about thirty years old when Lillie Dale would have attended in the mid-to-late 1890s — a young land-grant university in the middle of central-Ohio farm country. Her father Joseph Hill Chenoweth sending a daughter to Ohio State for music is a marker of the family’s standing in the community (the “prosperous farmer… highly respected” Charlie’s autobiography names). Her specific instrument or vocal training and whether she earned a degree are open research; the Ohio State archives could probably settle them through enrollment records.

She died in January 1970, age 92, less than three years before her husband Charles Leonard. She is the matriarch at the center of the late-1940s/’60s family group portrait, photographed at the Bexley home where she had raised everyone.

The Chenoweth marriage is one of two places the paternal family’s American branches widen: through Lillie Dale come Joseph Hill Chenoweth (1832–1910) and Mary O. Timmons Chenoweth (1845–1919), and behind them John K. Timmons (1806–1888) — the deepest documented ancestor on this branch. Lillie Dale’s older sister Scioto Mafry Chenoweth (1871–1930) — named after the Scioto River that runs past Columbus — is the woman Maggie Eesley’s deck remembers as one of the first women medical doctors in the United States in the late 1800s. The structured record neither confirms nor refutes the MD claim (no occupation field), but Scioto’s husband Dr. Lewis Albert Smith was an MD. A research-led follow-up at Ohio State medical archives, the AMA’s physician directory, or Ohio licensure records could settle whether Scioto, Lewis, or both held the degree.

The Chenoweth ancestry — colonial Cornish through Franklin County

Lillie Dale’s line on the Chenoweth side is among the best-documented colonial-American family threads in this archive, traced exhaustively by Jon Egge’s Chenoweth Site (published Dec 1995, the world’s most extensive Chenoweth knowledge base). Lillie appears there as “Lilly Dale Chenoweth, b. August 5, 1877 in Pleasant Twp., Franklin Co., Ohio,” married to “Charles L. Eesley, b. Abt. 1880 in Canada” — the same line this archive carries forward. Roberta Burnes’s family album, which Roberta inherited through the Burnes–Eesley line, is named in Egge’s source list, and the 1860s handwritten Chenoweth family register in Roberta’s keeping is one of the documents that anchors his structured account.

What Egge’s site adds to this archive’s picture of Lillie Dale’s ancestry:

Her father Joseph Hill Chenoweth served in the Civil War on the Union side — the structured record names “Civil War: Union” explicitly. He is buried at Otterbein Cemetery, Blendon Township, Franklin County, Ohio, alongside his wife Mary Ohio Timmons (married 1 December 1864). Mary’s mother is named in Egge’s record as “Elizabeth ‘Betsey’ ?” — the maiden surname is still open, but the given name is a step further back than this archive had reached before.

Her grandfather Elijah Chenoweth, Jr. (15 August 1806 – 7 April 1898, age 91) lived almost the entire nineteenth century in Pleasant Township, Franklin County. He married his cousin Nancy Chenoweth (25 October 1806 – 20 March 1874) on 16 April 1827 in a documented cousin marriage. Egge’s account: “Elijah, Jr. and Nancy would farm in Franklin Co. for their entire lives, bearing nine children and raising six of them to adulthood and marriage. Their lives are well documented in the historical accounts of the County. Like most of the Thomas2 Family they belonged to the Methodist Episcopal Church.” Both Elijah Jr. and Nancy are buried in the old Chenoweth cemetery in Franklin County, alongside Elijah’s parents. Roberta’s album also holds a photograph of Elijah Chenoweth, not yet on this site.

The line back to colonial America. From Elijah Jr. the line runs back four more generations to the founding couple of the American Chenoweths: John Chenoweth and Mary Calvert. The Chenoweth family is “a Colonial Family of Cornish roots that started in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey area about 1703 and moved to Baltimore County, Maryland in the 1730s. In the 1740s the father and 3 of the sons moved to Frederick Co., Virginia.” Virginia then became “a springboard for the westward movement and the Chenoweths a family of pioneer-settlers.” The branch this archive descends from is the Thomas line — one of Thomas’s grandchildren, Elijah Sr., settled in Franklin County, Ohio, where four generations of his descendants then farmed before Lillie Dale married Charles Leonard Eesley and the line shifted into the Eesley name.

The chain in single-line form:

John Chenoweth + Mary Calvert (Cornish roots, Pennsylvania c. 1703, Baltimore c. 1730s) → William(2) (Berkeley Co., Virginia) → Thomas(2) (Frederick Co., Virginia) → Thomas, Jr. (Franklin Co., Ohio) → Elijah (Franklin Co., Ohio) → Elijah, Jr. + Nancy Chenoweth (cousin marriage, Franklin Co., Ohio, 1827) → Joseph Hill Chenoweth + Mary Ohio Timmons (Franklin Co., Ohio, m. 1864, Civil War Union) → Lillie Dale Chenoweth (1877–1970) + Charles Leonard Eesley → the eight children of Charles Leonard, including Will Eesley → Charles McMaster “Charlie” Eesley → Chuck.

Egge’s site also names the second-cousin branch the family-history community knows well: through Lillie Dale’s son Leonard Eesley (her eldest child) the line runs forward to Dale Thomas Eesley — Lillie Dale’s great-grandson, and the Dale Eesley credited on this archive’s homepage as the fifth keeper, the maintainer of the FamilySearch tree. Chuck and Dale are third cousins through Lillie Dale Chenoweth.

One generation deeper — Jane Leonard, the pre-emigration Cornish ancestor

A trace through the GEDCOM tree (June 2026) surfaces a pre-emigration ancestor not yet named in the chain above. The colonial-American founder John Chenoweth (the “John Chenoweth + Mary Calvert” of the Pennsylvania-c.-1703 generation) had a mother: Jane Leonard, born 9 May 1655 in St Martin, Cornwall, England, who married a John Chenoweth of the same Cornish parish around the 1670s and is Lillie Dale’s six-generation-back maternal ancestor (Jane Leonard → John Chenoweth → Thomas Chenoweth → Elijah Chenoweth → Elijah Chenoweth, Jr. → Joseph Hill Chenoweth → Lillie Dale).

This is, as far as I can find, the source of the “Leonard” middle name that runs through three Eesley generations — Lillie Dale’s husband Charles Leonard Eesley, their son Leonard David Eesley, and Will’s brother Thomas Leonard Eesley. The timing detail is delicate: Charles Leonard was born in 1879, two years after Lillie Dale, and a quarter-century before they married, so his parents could not have chosen “Leonard” with the Chenoweth ancestry in mind. But their son Leonard David, born 1904 — after the marriage — plausibly reads as the first family member whose Leonard name carries both the father’s middle name and the mother’s deep Cornwall-Chenoweth ancestral signal. The three-Charleses essay reads the naming chain in fuller detail.

Sources: Mary Eesley Bean, Eesley Family History, p. 7; Charlie Eesley’s 12th-grade autobiography for the Ohio State music study; Jon D. Egge, The Chenoweth Site, the world’s most extensive Chenoweth knowledge base — specifically the Elijah Jr. and Nancy descendants page which carries Lillie Dale’s full lineage and her descendants through both the Will Eesley and Leonard Eesley branches. Roberta Burnes is named in the source list for that page through her contribution of the 1860s family register that anchors the structured account. The Jane Leonard pre-emigration finding is from the GEDCOM tree (June 2026 trace); FamilySearch record for Jane Leonard (GB8M-Z6Y).