Elizabeth Bray Piper and family
Mary Jane Piper came from Liskeard, Cornwall as a young woman to Leadville, Colorado around 1879. Her mother was Elizabeth Ann Bray Piper who had lost her husband Joseph and seems to have moved to the United States to be closer to her sister Catherine Richards Bray Slockett. Within months of arriving in Leadville, Elizabeth was running a boarding house on Carbonate Hill and was there for long enough to be visited by her brother Henry Truro Bray. Leadville was in its hey day at the time. Its population was swelling. The demand for accommodation was high.
Tragedy struck the little family, when Elizabeth died shortly thereafter in January of 1880. Her daughter Mary Jane married that year John Lloyd Burn, Jr and took in her brother Joseph. The youngest sister, Leila, was adopted by their uncle Henry Truro Bray who changed her name to Charlotte Bray. The middle sister, Bessie, seems to have been raised by their uncle Henry Slockett and would eventually marry her sister’s brother-in-law.
The earlier generations of the Pipers are not as clear. Joseph Piper’s parents, William and Elizabeth (Cann) Piper, were originally from Bideford, Devon. William was a shipwright and had as many as 13 children. William’s parents may have been William and Susannah (Hopkins) Piper from from Northam, Devon, however, this contention seems to be unsubstantiated by naming traditions (one would have expected the repetition of both the name William and Susanna in the family). Sometime after William died in 1843, his widow moved to Liskeard, Cornwall, possibly to be closer to her oldest daughter, Maria Piper Harris, who had moved to the region.
Scrapbook
Mary Jane (in Bray Scrapbook)