While Mary Jane Piper died long before I was born, it feels like I knew her. She and her sister Bessie lived to a respectable old age, especially against the mining mountain backdrop of Leadville, where many in my family died, young of the dreaded pneumonia.

My grandfather always chuckled when he talked of his grandmothe.  The old gals, he called them because in later life Mary Jane was almost inseparable from her sister Bessie,  The two widows spent hours in their small Leadville house, stirring tea leaves and trying to read the future.

1910, Mary lived at 516 East 7th Street with her second husband, Henry Wardell.

The 18th of January 1888, Mary Jane filed a quit claim to Henry McKeon for strayhorse addition at $652 (Leadville Herald Democrat)

Mary Jane Wardell 1913 made a visit to England, she returned via Ellis Island on August 10, 1913 on the Caronia from Liverpool. Place of residence is listed as Seadville, Colorado. She travelled with her husband, Henry Sutcliffe Wardell both listed as 49 years old. They are listed as naturalized citizens of Leadville on 20th March 1903 (Wardell is). Address is 516 E. 7th.

Mary Jane Piper Burn Wardell came to Leadville as a young woman with her mother Elizabeth Piper in 1879. Her father had died the year before in Cornwall and her mother died four months after they arrived in Leadville. Her sisters Bessie and Leila went to live with other members of the family. In fact, Leila was adopted by Henry Truro Bray, her uncle, and her name was changed to Charlotte Bray. Mary Jane met a very different fate. Merely a month after her mother died, she married John Lloyd Burn and raised her brother Joseph. She was to spend most of her life in Leadville at 517 E. 7th Avenue. She married a second
time after John died to Henry Wardell. Her sister Bessie also married a Burn and they remained good friends until the end.

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)