John Pipes Jr. sold his land in N. Carolina in 1795 and moved his family to Mercer County, Kentucky the following year. He purchased land along Doctor's Fork in the area south and west of present day Perryville. There was a considerable flow of people from the State of N. Carolina into the recently settled areas of Kentucky in the 1790's and John Hawkins states that John's brothers Sylvanus and Phillip were in Kentucky before 1790, so he probably heard from them how good things were in Kentucky and made the move. (Note: we now know that Sylvanus and Phillip came to Kentucky in 1788, when Sylvanus appears on a tax role in 1789 in Lincoln County. (Thanks to Joan Shacklette) Many of the men who settled in this area were soldiers from the Revolution, men with names like Rains, Harmon, Gray, and Montgomery. Their names are celebrated in this area of Kentucky, with a cast bronze plate affixed to the front wall of the County Courthouse in Danville holding forth their names for all to see and remember.
John Jr. was the only brother to remain in Kentucky as Sylvanus moved on to the Missouri country with his children after 1810 and Phillip moved on to Wayne Co., Kentucky between 1800 and 1804. Phillip later moved to Limestone Co., Alabama, probably after 1810.
John raised all 11 of his children with Mary Morris in Kentucky, his brothers Sylvanus and Phillip raised children here and in general, from 1790 to 1810 there were many, many Pipes' in Kentucky. But by the time I returned to Kentucky in 1983 they had all been long gone from here. I believe that all of John's children raised families and died here, most of them buried in the Doctor's Fork Cemetery or nearby churchyards, but his grandchildren gradually slipped away. The Civil War brought change and by the time my grandfather James Franklin Pipes was a young man in the late 1890's, the urge to move on was very strong. They moved on to such places as Missouri, Indiana, Michigan, Texas, California and Montana. There are still some descendants in the area with names like Mayes, Pope, Harmon and others, but the name Pipes is strictly history material.
So this area is the third "well spring" for the Pipes name, the first being Pennsylvania and Joseph and John Pipes; the second being Hiram Pipes in N. Carolina.
This is certainly not an after thought, but several of the descendants of John Pipes and Eleanor Slater of SW Pennsylvania migrated to Kentucky as well. They seem to have settled in the county of Meade, which is west of Louisville, along the river. Descendants of this family moved into Harrison county, Indiana and possibly Switzerland Co. also.
