Silas Monroe Pipes

Pvt Company I, 7th Kentucky Cavalry (Morgan's Raiders)

Silas was one of four men from the Kentucky Pipes family who joined up with John Hunt Morgan in the fall of 1862. Along with his brother Obediah and his cousins Elias and Bradford they decided to support the confederacy.

Silas Monroe Pipes was born on May 10, 1839, the youngest son and the eighth of nine children born to Nathaniel Pipes and his wife Margaret Harmon. Nathaniel was a farmer in the area west of Danville, Kentucky in the area known as Doctor's Fork and that is where Silas and his brothers were raised. Guns and horses were certainly not strangers to these men as they lived close to the land and came from a strong military background. Silas was the grandson of two Revolutionary War soldiers, John Pipes Jr. and Michael Harmon. So when things began to heat up in the Kentucky region in the fall of 1862, he took his horse, his guns and they all rode off for the big adventure. Many of his cousins, relatives and neighbors joined also, as you look at the roster of men you see names like Harmon and Gray on the rolls, all relatives and neighbors.

I have not been able to find out the exact story, but Silas joined with the others and during the first great raids into Kentucky from their base in northern Tennessee in the late fall of 1862, he was either wounded or had a change of heart. His name is marked on the rolls from December of 1862 as missing after the raids into Elizabethtown, Bardstown and the surrounding area. We know that he survived, as he was a deputy sherrif in his home region near the end of the war. I have a  letter written by one of his grandsons who describes his feats but does not mention being wounded during the war.

Silas married Sarah Elizabeth Rice in May or June of 1869 and they moved on to Weston, Missouri. This move was made because of threats on his life made by outlaws in the area according to the letter mentioned above. Silas and Lizzie raised eight children in Bates County, Missouri: Minnie, Gertrude, Louise, Mattie, William, James, John and Grover. They were tobacco farmers and lived comfortably. His children and their descendants moved all over Missouri and the western states, and I have communicated with one of his great grandaughters, Mrs Mary Moroney of Littleton Colorado for several years.

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