Susannah Bubb Eesley

The Bean register called her Hannah Bubb. The Oxford library volunteer, working a generation later, wrote her down as Susan Babbs. Dale’s FamilySearch tree, working from the parish registers themselves, settles both readings: she was Susannah Bubb, born 4 December 1796 in Charlecote, Warwickshire — and the proof is that one of her sons was named George Bubb Eesley, carrying his mother’s maiden name as his middle name in the old custom.

She married John Eesley at Charlecote on 10 May 1819 and bore him eleven children: Hannah (1819), Mary Polly (1821), Eydth (~1824), Emma (1828, who died the same year), Evess (1830), William (1834), George Bubb (1836), Albert Robert (1837) — the emigrant whose son Charles Leonard would father Will — John (d. 1874), Jane (1841), and Henry (1842). The 1851 census found her at fifty, still working, at Rother Street in Old Stratford.

The conflation in Bean’s register comes from her daughter Hannah Eesley (b. December 1819) — also a Hannah, also a Bubb-descendant by name. The line carried two Hannahs in adjacent generations; one survived in family memory as the wife of John, when she was really his daughter.

The Hannah biography in family memory

A substantial biographical narrative about “Hannah” survives in family memory and was transmitted by Chuck in 2026. The narrative belongs to one of the two Hannahs of this generation — either Susannah (“Hannah Bubb” per Bean) herself, or her daughter Hannah Eesley (b. December 1819, m. Thomas Smith 1844 per GEDCOM). The story as transmitted:

Hannah was wet-nurse to the family of the Lord Mayor of London and saved enough money to help get the family to the USA in 1858. They had a farm near Elizabeth, New Jersey. They later moved to Newark, NJ where they operated a bakery. Hannah married a second time at age 75 to a childhood sweetheart. John and Hannah had seven children: Hannah, William, George, Albert, John, Mary “Polly”, and Harry.

The seven children listed — Hannah, William, George, Albert, John, Mary “Polly”, Harry — map almost exactly onto a subset of Susannah’s documented eleven children (Hannah 1819, William 1834, George Bubb 1836, Albert Robert 1837, John d. 1874, Mary Polly 1821, Henry 1842), suggesting Bean transmitted a seven-child version of the family from which Eydth, Emma, Evess, and Jane had been dropped (the four who appear to have died young or been omitted from family memory).

The 1858 emigration to New Jersey is consistent with John Eesley Sr’s son John (d. 1874) being the emigrant who reached Elizabeth and Newark — and consistent with John Sr’s son Albert Robert’s known stop in Newark, NJ before going on to Ayr, Canada (per William Eesley’s c. 1916 obituary). The Newark NJ leg is documented from multiple independent sources.

What remains unresolved: which Hannah was the wet-nurse to the Lord Mayor’s family, and whose “John” the second remarriage refers to. The GEDCOM has the daughter Hannah Eesley marrying Thomas Smith on 23 January 1844 at St Mary’s, Warwick — not a John — which argues the “John and Hannah” of Chuck’s narrative are John Eesley Sr. and Susannah (“Hannah” in family memory) in their parental roles, with the seven children being Bean’s compressed list of her offspring. On that reading, Susannah herself would have been the wet-nurse to the Lord Mayor’s family, working in London earlier in her marriage, and the woman who organized the emigration in 1858, settling first at Elizabeth NJ then at the Newark bakery, who then remarried (at age 75 around 1871, the year after John Sr’s 1870 death) to a childhood sweetheart from Charlecote.

This is queued for resolution against Bean’s 1985 register (which may name the Lord Mayor and date the emigration), and against Newark NJ city directories of the 1860s and 1870s (which would record an Eesley bakery operation).

Sources: Dale Eesley / FamilySearch — Susannah Bubb (MS7P-DQK); Mary Eesley Bean, 1985 register; Oxford library research notes, 2018; family memory transmitted by Chuck Eesley 2026.