Here are a few pages from my forthcoming book "Meanwhile Back at the Ranch,' that I am doing for my children. the book is due to hit the news stands around the year 2002, if not before. These parts are my interpretation of the 'Pyle Book,' 'Coonrod and His Descendents' and a few pages from Edward Rutherfurds 'Sarum' I hope there's something you can glean from this. Anton's classical dictionary defines the term Pylae as a word used in ancient Greece to describe a narrow passage or gate. Thermopylae or Warm Gates is a pass between Greece and Persia. In the year 480 BC. a great battle occurred between the Persians and 300 Spartans and their allies at Thermopylae. The leader Leonidas sent the allies away when he found that a local Greek betrayed them and the battle was hopeless. The Persians massacred the Spartans and the allies that went home named themselves Pylae in honor of their friends. Julius Caesar and his Roman armies later invaded Briton and among those armies were descendants of the allies from the battle at Thermopylae. When the Romans left Britain, a number of those who had changed their name to Pyle remained in England. The names Pyle/Pile are first found in the 'Domesday Book' by William the Conqueror. William was a Norman King who defeated the Saxons at the battle of Hastings in 1066 and occupied "Old Sarum" or Salisbury until the year 1087. Coming from the North, the North Men or Norman's were actually Vikings that originally settled in Scotland and then in Normandy on the coast of France. They sailed to Britain to engage the Saxon's in 1066 at Hastings. William's "Domesday Book" was an inventory of possessions in the kingdom used for the purpose of taxing his citizens. With it he required that every one have a surname. However, the Pyle surname is in the 'Hundred Roll,' a recap of the battle of Hastings. Our ancestors settled at Wiltshire, famous for Stonehenge and the Salisbury Plains. Medieval Scribes used the name Sarum as an abbreviation for Salisbury. Sounding pleasant to the people of the area, they used "Sarum" to describe the diocese, the town and the area for 750 years. Somewhere between 9,000 and 6,000 BC, Britain and the European mainland separated and during this period a group of sun worshipers from Egypt crossed the land bridges and built Stonehenge as a sort of gigantic calendar. It lies north of Salisbury and close to the River Avon. No other place on earth has generated as much speculation and wild theories as the huge standing stone's at Stonehenge taunting us with mystery. Judging from the history of the area it's possible that some of our ancestors were among those that lifted the huge stones that rest on the pillars at Stonehenge. The earth around Sarum consisted of chalk and a story concerning an uncle of our Robert Pyle, also named Robert, hired a contractor to carve into one of these chalk hills a figure of a gigantic horse. The figure was fifty yards from nose to tail and after taking Robert Pile's money, the contractor laid out the outline and disappeared, leaving Robert to finish the project. These chalk hill carvings are all over Wiltshire and number nine at the last count. In many cases they are more of a tourist attraction than the Druidical remains and Stonehenge that are nearby. The manor farm that Robert Pile was a tenant, is the property of New College, to which institution it was given by William of Wykeham. Howard and Jane's big book recorded early history concerning the Pyles of Wiltshire and they provide reference for every fact noted. John Piles, Gentleman, granted Patent of "New Sarum" in 1642 in the state of Maryland came from Salisbury and arrived in Maryland with sixteen other gentlemen and 200 servants on two ships, "The Ark and The Dove." These were some of the first of the Pile/Pyle ancestors to set foot on the "New World!" "The World Book of Pyles," states that Peter Wilson Coldham in his book "European Origins." "Bonded Passengers to America," published by Baltimore Genealogical Publishing Company, on page 40 lists another William Pyle arriving in Baltimore in 1720. The Maryland Pyles are among those I suspect of being my direct ancestral line. Ron, the informer