William Eesley (of College Corner)

William Eesley was born in Detroit, Michigan, one of the ten children of Albert Robert Eesley (Stratford-on-Avon, England; eventually of Toronto) and Jennie Goldie (Ayrshire, Scotland; of Ayr, Ontario). He is Chuck’s great-great-uncle on the paternal side — specifically, the brother of Chuck’s great-grandfather Charles Leonard Eesley.

He educated at the Detroit public schools and then traveled for several years as a journeyman miller, the same trade six of his brothers also took up. In 1909 he took up residence at College Corner, a small town straddling the Ohio-Indiana state line in southwestern Ohio’s Butler County (and southeastern Indiana’s Union County). His milling property sat on the Indiana side of the state line; his residence on the Ohio side. He was also a third owner in the Oxford mills at nearby Oxford, Ohio — the home of Miami University. By the time of his obituary he was “accounted one of the substantial business men of his locality.”

The Sir Robert Peel marriage

He married Clara Peel of Topeka, Kansas — daughter of James and Ella Peel of Mount Sterling, Kentucky. Clara was, by the obituary’s account, a lineal descendant of Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850) — the British Prime Minister, founder of the modern Conservative Party, founder of the Metropolitan Police of London (the “Bobbies” / “Peelers” still take his name), and architect of the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. Whether the Peel lineage is correctly remembered by the obituary or family-folkloric is open; the connection appears nowhere else in this archive’s structured genealogy and is queued for follow-up at the Peel Society or in 19th-century Kansas Peel family records.

One child of the marriage is named in the obituary:

• Frances Eesley (b. 1901) — m. H. Toney, a farmer near College Corner. They had one son, William E. Toney, named for his maternal grandfather.

Civic life

The obituary records William as a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks — a national fraternal order at its peak in the early 20th century, with strong Ohio-Indiana chapters along the Miami River corridor.

Why this page matters to the rest of the archive

William’s obituary is the single most detailed surviving biographical sketch of his father Albert Robert Eesley — the source of the Shakespeare’s-birthplace schoolteaching detail, the Newark-Ayr-Detroit-Toronto migration route, and the full list of A. R. and Jennie’s ten children. The full text of the obituary is held as its own document in this archive: William Eesley obituary, c. 1916.

Sources: William Eesley obituary, c. 1916 (College Corner, Ohio), contributed by Dale Eesley to the Butler County, Ohio memoirs collection at RootsWeb. Page is a stub pending dates of birth/death, Clara Peel’s dates, and the Peel-lineage research follow-up.