Michael Farber works with people who recently built an exact replica of the Elizabeth Tilley, a shallop used by Pilgrims after they landed on Cape Cod back in 1620.

"The Elizabeth Tilley was a work boat Pilgrims used to do their trading around Cape Cod Bay. It was 40 feet long and single-masted," said Farber, who now lives in Cape Cod. "The Mayflower was huge, weighing 180 tons. Cape Cod Bay is relatively shallow. This is the type of boat the Pilgrims used."

The original Elizabeth Tilley was stowed on the Mayflower on its 1620 voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. Stored in pieces, the shallop was reassembled to explore the Cape after the Pilgrims landed in Provincetown.

When he first moved to West Virginia in 1972, Farber worked as a surveyor helping build trails.

After practicing law for 22 years, he returned to Cape Cod in 2005, where he started studying Pilgrim history.  

"I stumbled upon an old survey chart that revealed the Pilgrims used the natural land features surrounding Cape Cod Bay as a compass rose to lay out the first comprehensive land survey in the New World," he said.

"The discovery of the Pilgrim Land Survey of Cape Cod has changed perceptions of Pilgrim history at the very roots of western culture," Farber said. "They were not merely religious zealots, but astute scientific observers who fashioned the New World from the wilderness using mathematics and geometry."

Farber said he is trying "to alter the perception of the Pilgrims."

"They did not just found Thanksgiving," he said. "We want to bring Pilgrim culture back to the Cape."

Farber graduated from law school in 1983, and then worked for current Attorney General Darrell McGraw, then a West Virginia Supreme Court justice.

Farber was born and grew up in Baltimore, where his father was president of the National Brewing Co. National Brewing owned the Baltimore Orioles for a few years, after the St. Louis Browns changed their name when they moved to Maryland.

In 1956, when Farber was 4 years old, his family bought a summer home on Cape Cod.

A maverick lawyer who often represented underdog clients in West Virginia, Farber worked for groups seeking better health care, a cleaner environment and higher taxes on coal companies. He also worked on juvenile and divorce cases.

Often controversial, Farber had his law license suspended for three months in the early 1990s and practiced under the supervision of another lawyer for two years.

In the late 1980s, Farber helped unearth a Nicholas County arson ring -- including former county Sheriff Darrell Johnson and Deputy Lloyd Dillon. Both served time in prison.

In exposing the arson ring, Farber generated problems for himself when he went too far, the state Supreme Court ruled, in charging that retired Circuit Judge Elmer D. Strickler participated in that conspiracy. That case played the key role in the temporary suspension of Farber's law license.

Farber is now working with a community partnership he created with sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders from the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School.

"We went to explore for the original survey marker stones along the coast," he said.

In November 2009, they found an old stone buried a few inches under a bayside salt marsh. It was inscribed "YxB."

"The 'Y' stands for Yarmouth and 'B' for Barnstable -- towns formed in 1637," Farber said. "I found a reference in the records of the Plymouth General Court to a court hearing held in Yarmouth on June 17, 1641. It described the first court hearing ever held outside of Plymouth Plantation."

Yarmouth and Barnstable were the first towns created on Cape Cod, back in 1639.

Farber and his Cornerstone project publicly announced the discovery of the "YxB" stone two years ago, a discovery Farber said has remained "unchallenged by historians."

"It predates the myth of Plymouth Rock by 150 years," he said. "And it's inscribed!"

The Pilgrims did not inscribe Plymouth Rock, he said.

"The Pilgrims stepped on a stone when they left the Mayflower," he said. "But it wasn't Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock was spun into myth."

The Plymouth Rock widely visited today is inscribed with the date 1620.

Reach staff writer Paul J. Nyden at pjny...@wvgazette.com or 304-3348-5164.