Talking with my aunt and cousins at a family funeral, we found that we knew a lot about one side of the family, due to excellent material published by others but we knew very little about our Pye heritage.  I offered to research our Lancastrian Pye line further, having already started doing so some years earlier. Creating a One Name Study made sense, as I soon realised  that there are at least three distinct Pye bloodlines in Lancashire, possibly more. It always feels unhelpful to discard research that does not relate directly to one's own family line, when it might be relevant and helpful to others.  My research is still at an early stage and is very much a work-in-progress. In part this is due to the sheer scale of the task of researching unrelated families over multiple generations in Lancashire and I am only now starting to look further afield, beginning with those who died in WW1. It has taken an inordinate amount of time and effort to review evidence sources and decide which Pye family they relate to.  I am keen to share and collaborate with others and link up the different strands of this work.

Pie. Pyi. Pyer. Poye

LANCASHIRE

Pye was not an uncommon surname in Lancashire in the period prior to the Great War.  Two of the Lancashire bloodlines have their own distinct naming conventions that seem to apply across generations, which has helped me separate them.  Miles and Jude, for example,  are common forenames in the Pye bloodline that originates around Halsall, spreading down towards Aintree and out towards Southport.  Tabitha occurs occasionally in that bloodline too. The bloodline found around Garston, Much Woolton and Little Woolton favours John, James and Thomas as forenames for its menfolk and Ann, Mary and Jane for its women.  John, William, Thomas and Luke were popular names amongst the Pyes who worked as agricultural labourers or as canal boatmen in Burscough.

Roger, Nathaniel, James, John and George were popular male Pye names amongst Lancastrians from Rainford, Aughton and Liverpool, particularly in the 17th and 18th centuries. 

CHESHIRE

There is a Matthias Pye bloodline in Runcorn.

The Genealogist website's distribution of the Pye surname across England and Wales in 1891 (see below) shows the largest number of Pye family groups in Lancashire with familial groupings in London, Norfolk,  Staffordshire, Essex,  Shropshire and Cheshire.  Some of these groups are linked to Pyes who worked as 'flatmen'  on  the canal routes that were an essential means of transporting raw materials and finished goods to and from North West England. 

County	Pye families in 1891 census	Note
Lancashire	344	Seemingly unrelated groups in Halsall and Childwall/Garston areas
London	124
Norfolk	67
Staffordshire	39
Essex	30
Shropshire	120	Linked to Lancashire by canal boat families
Cheshire	113	Linked to Lancashire by canal boat families
Suffolk	93
Kent	74	Gillingham branch was a canal boat family
Northumberland	60
Warwickshire	59
Surrey	52
Lincolnshire	38
Devon	36
Herefordshire	36	linked to Pye in Wales, London and Shropshire
Nottinghamshire	34
Middlesex	28
Wiltshire	25
Dorset	23
Derbyshire	22
Cornwall	22
Gloucestershire	20	Links with Pye families who emigrated to Victoria, Australia and New Zealand
Cambridgeshire	19
Hertfordshire	16
Hampshire	15
Berkshire	14
Sussex	14
Worcestershire	14
Leicestershire	12
Glamorgan	12
Somerset	12	Links to Pye families in Australia
Monmouthshire	11
Cumberland	8
Northamptonshire	7
Huntinghamshire	5
Bedfordshire	3
Radnorshire	2
Denbighshire	1
Buckinghamshire	1
Oxfordshire	1
Yorkshire	0
not yet located	375
	4193

OCCUPATIONS

In Burscough and across Cheshire, Pye families lived and worked on or near the canal network, either on the barges or as labourers in related trades.

One such trade was brewing and selling beer:

• Several generations of the Pye bloodline -  Thomas (1793-1866) and his son John (born 1829) - ran the Blue Anchor pub in Aintree on Melling Road, later renamed as School Lane.
• Miles Pye from Birkdale is shown as a publican and licensed victualler residing in Fazakerley Street in Liverpool in the 1841 and 1851 censuses respectively.
• In Aughton, James Hewitt Pye (1817 -1862?), son of William Pye and his wife Ann (nee Hewitt) from Rainford was a master brewer and maltster. James bought the Aughton Brewery site around 1850 and lived there with his brothers and sisters. The family apparently grew much of their own malt and other crops. James did not marry but his sister Hannah (born 1821),  also a brewer and maltster ran the business with her husband Edward Sudbury after James's death.

The Liverpool contingent included sailors and ropers.