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The Canadian Ilsleys

Replies: 3

The Canadian Ilsleys

Posted: 12 Nov 2009 9:13PM GMT
Classification: Query
Surnames: Ilsley, Kelliher
Ilsley is my maiden name (which I have returned to using after being married and widowed). I am surprised that this site of the Ilsley family seems to omit any reference to our family in Canada.

You all probably know that in England there is an East Ilsley and West Ilsley in Berkshire, not far south of Oxford. I visited there about 20 years ago, and there was a monument to a very early ancestor of ours in East Ilsley. It appears the village was founded by a man name Hild in c700 A.D. "Lea" is old English for a freehold... Thus, Hild's Lea obviously came down through the centuries to become Ilsley.

My father told me our branch of the familiy emigrated from England to settle in Nova Scotia approximately 1756. I do not know of interim descendants but only for lack of researching them. :) However, my immediate family on my father's side are still in Canada. My uncle was James Lorimer Ilsley, and was in the Canadian cabinet as Minister for Finance, and was also acting Prime Minister during a period when Mackensie King was stranded in England during World War II.

My father was Philip Sydney Ilsley and he emigrated from Canada to the eastern United States in the 1920s. However, he set up a business in the midwest, met and married my mother Irene Mary Kelliher, the daughter of Irish immigrants. They sold the business, returned to New York City, where I was born.

On my father's prior trip to New York he had observed the construction of the Holland Tunnel where guniting, pneumatically sprayed concrete, attracted his attention.

When some years later he bought a small business from Pascal Paddock, Paddock Engineering Company,in Los Angeles, California, my father revolutionalized the swimming pool industry. He introduced pool construction using gunite, not poured concrete. Today, it seems this is the standard world-wide. He has been called the "granddaddy of the swimming pool industry."

So we are a branch of the American Ilsleys, but the family is very strong in Canada from Nova Scotia to Winnepeg where my cousins live.

My children live in California, and I lived in Santa Barbara for many years, but I have relocated to an island in the Seattle and Tacoma area. I hope this information might be helpful in spotting more Ilsleys.

Good wishes to you all.
SubjectAuthorDate Posted
ktidid 13 Nov 2009 4:13AM GMT 
ilsleyjohn281 30 Aug 2010 9:16PM GMT 
dspinksy 2 Mar 2011 4:56PM GMT 
Kevin m 25 Feb 2015 10:34PM GMT 
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