This work is not intended to be a comprehensive accumulation of the vast amount of information available on the Pyle family, but only a single, short, direct line to the ancestors of Nathan Pyle, founder of Pylesville, Harford County, Maryland.

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                             A Quaker Disownment Puzzle

  Until very recently, those of us who had traced our ancestry back to Nathan Pyle, son of David and Hanna Pyle, "both deceased", sadly discovered that we had reached the end of the line. From Gilbert Cope's 1861 family record, we knew that he married Grace Cope, daughter of David and Margaret (Brown) Cope, 30th day, 5th month, 1804.  That record also states that Nathan was the son of David and Hanna Pyle. [1]

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   Cope's book is the history of his Quaker ancestry.  Investigation of Quaker practices and traditions revealed that the members always married members of their faith. [2] We thus assumed that Nathan's parents were both Quakers.  But, Nathan has become a Friend "by convincement" before his marriage. [3] The scarcity of Meeting records for David meant that he had been 'disowned' for marring 'out of unity'. He and Hannah had been married by a Baptist teacher [4] and did not 'acknowledge' this as the sin the Quakers believed it to be. thus their son, Nathan , was not a 'birthright' Quaker.

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  In 2015, I met Christine Skinner Koehler, a fellow Nathan descendant! Her great grandmother, Hannah Grace Pyle, and my grandfather, Edward Everett Pyle, are siblings. Chris told me that her mother, Eleanor Grace Ramsey Skinner, had heard family lore that there was a disownment, which of course removes the disowned from most of the subsequent Quaker records. So we joined forces and set out the solve the puzzle.  Chris is a thorough and patient researcher, and in 2019, she found Hannah's identity using the ancestry.com Quaker Meeting records and the tip provided by James E. Hazard, Genealogist, at the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College who proposed that David and Hannah may have been members of different Meetings.  Our hope is that the many descendants of Nathan, who heretofore have hit the steel reinforced concrete and brick wall in their exploration of this line, are finally able to connect to the Pyle family of Pennsylvania.  

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[1]Cope, Gilbert, History of the Cope Family in America, King &     Baird, 1861.

[2]Berry, Ellen T. & David A., Our Quaker Ancestors,        Genealogical Pub. Co, Baltimore. MD 1987 : 45-48, 50.

[3]PA, Chester, Nottingham MM Minutes 1791-1808 : 408 image      45/574 ancestry.com

[4]PA, Chester, New Garden MM Men's Minutes 1779-1790 : 55        ancesry.com