The Beasley family of Cambridgeshire

The Beasley family lived in Ely, in the fenland county of Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom.

The earliest confirmed record of the family that I have recorded so far, is from February 1764, when my 6x Great Grandparents William Beasley and Mary Cropley get married at the parish church of Stuntney - a hilltop village overlooking Ely, and less than 2 miles away.

The couple soon become parents, eventually to my 5x Great Grandmother Mary Beasley and at least 5 other siblings. These are all baptised in Ely at the Holy Trinity Church.

Mary went on to marry to Dean Jeffery and have at least 7 children - one of which - a Sarah Beasley Jeffery took her mother's maiden name as her middle name.

When William Beasley died in 1786, he was noted as a Sexton, and therefore may have held some kind of role with Ely's Holy Trinity Church.

His wife, Mary (née Cropley) lived until she was 92 years old. That's impressive considering life expectancy in the UK around the 1820s would have been under 40!

Variants of the Beasley surname

Whilst the range of places where my Beasley ancestors lived so far totals only 2 places, and just a couple of miles apart, the spelling of the name was clearly a problem. It's hard to know the literacy levels of those writing the registers, and mixed with a potential thick fenland accent, and their own ignorance of how to spell their surname, it's unsurprising that there's a few variations in spelling. These include:

• Beasley
• Beasly
• Beesley
• Beesly
• Beazley
• Beazly

Beasley family connections

So far, my research has found that the Beasley family are connected to just two of my ancestral families - my Jeffery family of Ely, and the Cropley family of Stuntney.