The story behind this photo is very interesting. I had found the name of Mrs. Louise Hewitt a few years ago in material that one of  the Pipes researchers had sent to me. I wrote her a letter addressed to Sycamore, Pa.,  and never received a reply. Then I found out this year that Louise had moved to West Virginia. Larry Gaskill had made contact with Louise and in their conversations they discovered the existence of the photo of Joseph Pipes. Louise had managed to save a copy of it from the effects of her late husband's Uncle Joe. The best way to describe it is through her letters to me and I have included them here for your benefit. They are edited to remove extraneous information, but they tell the story from someone who was close to the family origins in Greene Co.


Before we continue, it is appropriate to tell you of the relationship of the Hewitt family and the Pipes family.

Joseph Pipes

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        Mary Pipes ( daughter)        Anne Pipes (daughter)

m.                                     m.

Samuel Thompson                Miller Blachly

l                                        l

l                                        l

              John Pipes Thompson    m.     Sarah Ann Blachly   ( cousins)

l                                         l

l                                         l

     l-----------------l---------------------l

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Flora Ellen (Ella) Thompson

m.

Samuel Henry Hewitt

                                               ______________________________ ( children of Flora and Samuel)

      1. Harry Cleveland Hewitt

2. Nettie Gail Hewitt

  3. Bertha Pearl Hewitt

                                                4. John Nicholas *--------Louise's  husband's father.

                                                                  5. Joseph Cecil ------------Uncle Joe. ( mentioned in the letters)

                                                                                                       6. Orpha Hewitt


This is the first E mail I received from Louise after she had generously agreed to share this photo with us.

March 18, 1999

Bob,

Since I am related to Pipes only by marriage, I did not start working on this family until after my husband died in 1992. The rest of the family was after me to write up something on the Hewitt and related families. I just barely touched on the Pipes family, although I had gathered some info before this.

The picture is, as far as I know, authentic. My late husband's Uncle Joe died in 1984. It was while I was helping his daughter go through a family trunk that I found the picture of Joseph Pipes. Uncle Joe had shown us this picture years before, but I had forgotten about it. He had it marked on the back as being "Grandpap, Joseph Pipes". This is the Joseph Pipes was was born Mar. 17, 1763 and died Feb. 23, 1856.

I will tell you what I know of the picture of the wife of Joseph Pipes. Uncle Joe lived in the same house as the Thompson's had lived in for years. After he moved out, some of the family was still living there. He had the picture of Joseph Pipes and wife "Hannah" in frames on the wall. He left them there. Years later, after no one had lived in the house for some time, my sister-in-law went there just to look around. She saw these large picture frames thrown into a shed behind the house. She looked at the pictures, but not recognizing them, just left them there. Much later she mentioned this to me and I asked Uncle Joe about them. He told me they were of Joseph Pipes and wife "Hannah". We went back to try to retrieve them, but the house, shed and all had burnt to the ground. All I know about Hannah is hearsay from the family. They said she was Shawnee Indian and was known by her Americanized name, Hannah. There are many stories as to how they met, but none that can be proven.

Back to the picture of Joseph Pipes that I sent to Larry. I do not have a real copy of that picture. Darlene loaned it to me long enough to make a xerox copy. My daughter happened to be home at the time and since she was studying photography, [she] took a picture of that picture, along with several others that I had. I do have the picture she took, but it is small. I probably still have the negative here. I will check the first chance I get. If I can find it, and that picture would be OK with you, I will either send the negative or get copies made from the negative. ( NOTE: this is the picture that we now have on the web page RJP)

I will gladly share what little I have. When I lived at Sycamore, Pa, it was not far from the Pipes place. They tell me he (Joseph) was buried on the farm where he lived, but both he and his wife's stones had been removed. They were supposedly found leaning against the side of the barn. I was never able to prove or disprove this.

Louise


This next letter is one that I sent to Louise while trying to sort out the story behind this picture.

April 7, 1999

Dear Louise,

I have been preparing the photo that you sent to me for placement on the Web Page and a couple of questions keep nagging at me.

First: Did Dorothy Hennen know about this picture of Joseph? With all of the digging she did into his story and all of the interviews she did about him, I am very surprised that she never discovered it.

Second: Did you see the original pictures that hung on the wall in the Thompson house? Can you describe the woman that you called "Hannah"?

Third: Is this picture of Joseph that you sent to me, the same man that was in those pictures and was he the same age in those pictures or was he older or younger?

Fourth: Was your husband's Uncle Joe really a grandson of Joseph Pipes? That is, what was his relationship to the family?

Please don't think I am being critical, its just that I like to make sure I get the information correct, because this is going to be a big deal to a lot of his descendants and they are going to ask me a million questions about this photo. So I need to know as much as I can about it. Some of them have looked for years for a picture of him and this will be a shock to them.

A couple of them have told me in the past that they do not believe the story about the indian wife because they are sure their great grandmother would have said something about it. There is a deed somewhere that has a reference to a woman named Hannah as being his wife and it is mentioned in the notes you sent me.

Please tell me again about how you knew the wife's name was Hannah and especially what she looked like.

Thanks for your patience. and thank you again for the picture and the info.

Regards,

Bob Pipes


This is the letter that Louise sent back to me.

April 8, 1999

Dear Bob,

I will try to answer all your questions to your satisfaction.

First: I do not believe Dorothy Hennen knew of the picture (or pictures). Evidently she did not search or interview enough to know the people who could tell her about the Hewitt connection to Joseph Pipes. There were several living close in Greene County and even Washington County. I met Dorothy a total of two times before joining Cornerstone Gen. Soc., and both times it  was concerning research on my family lines. After I joined Cornerstone in 1981, I overheard Dorothy talking about Joseph Pipes at a meeting. I informed her that my husband was a descendant of Joseph Pipes. She acted like she didn't believe me and starting asking questions until she was sure it was true. (Hewitt's and Hennen's did not travel in the same circles). At that time, I was still not working on my husband's lines, so it went no further. Then she became ill and could no longer do research.

Second: No. I, personally, did not see the pictures on the wall of the Thompson House. If I did, since I only visited the house once shortly after I married, I did not pay attention to walls or pictures. --My husband's sister is the one who discovered the pictures in the shed. Sometime later she told me about them. I happened to mention this to Uncle Joe. He is the one who told me who they were. He had lived in that house for most of his life. Only moving out in mid 1950's. --Uncle Joe then showed me the picture that I sent you a copy of.  When the wife was mentioned, I asked him if this was the woman the family always said was Indian. He said it was and if I could have seen the picture, I would know why. The only way I can describe her is using his words "she sure looked Indian". Aunt Nettie, Uncle Joe's sister, confirmed this.

Third: I cannot tell you the age of the man in the Thompson house pictures, as I never saw them, and age was not discussed concerning the pictures.

Fourth: Joseph Hewitt was the gg-grandson of Joseph Pipes.

Louise


All of the above information leads me to believe that this is a picture of Joseph and that his wife probably was named Hannah. There is a deed that Kathryn Bassett discovered and is also referenced in Mrs Hennen' notes. It is in Greene Co. deed book #7 page 550 and mentions the name "Hannah". As to her ancestry, we can only add this to what we already know and continue to look for more proof.

The date of the photo is also bound to be in question so I did some brief research on the history of photography and found this info:

It looks like daguerreotypes were first available in late 1839 in New York City. They spread like wildfire across the country and in 2 years they were available in even smaller communities, except it was fairly expensive. Daguerreotypes were made on a glass plate and usually were encased in a frame of some kind to protect the glass.This is an important clue. They were popular until the mid 1850s when other types of photo processes were more popular and less expensive. So if it's not a daguerreotype than it's date must be after 1850.

Joseph Pipes was born in 1763 and if this was a daguerreotype then it had to be taken after 1842 when he would have been 79 years old.

Well, that is the story behind this photo. I am deeply grateful to Louise Hewitt who has put up with my constant questions and who agreed to share this treasure with us, and to Larry Gaskill who did the digging to make this happen.

Bob Pipes   April, 1999