[X] My Assistant

[dvandorn]

Bruce, I was watching a special on modern China the other day and a China specialist was pontificating on several points. His name was Bill Moomaw.

Now, you're the first person I ever ran across with that last name, so I figure it can't be all *that* common. Is this fellow some relation of yours?

-the other Doug

[The Messenger]

First lier doesn't have a chance...

My family name, Woodbury, is thought to be derived from the Danish for Wild and Burg, or the 'Wild Borough'. The Woodbury castle was built in Cornwall prior to the Norman invasion. The Woodbury's fled with the puritans to New England in 1623, and get this, William and John Woodbury were granted the charters for both Salem and New Salem.

William's great great grandson, Jeremiah, converted to Mormonism in 1840. He was in the Third wagon train to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, and his grandson Willian, my great grandfather, was among the first children born in the desert.

So I have Wild Danes, Polygamist and witches, and if I have to come back with a bigger story, wait until you hear about my mother's family...

Edit - year, based upon a list of the founders and settlers of the first Puritan settlement, Cape Ann & Naumkeag, 1623-1627:

Allen, Balch, Conant, Cushman, Gardner, Gray, Jeffrey, Knight, Lyford, Norman, Oldham, Palfrey, Patch, Pickryn, Winslow, Woodbury.
In ~ 1627 some of these families resettled in Salem.

[ustrax]

My own, Borges, comes from a portuguese knight back in the middle ages, Rodrigo Anes, that fought aside the king of France Phillipe Augustus, and helped releasing the city of Bourges from a siege, so brave and passionate he was on his task that he was named the Chevalier de Bourges, or the Bourges' Knight.
When he returned to Portugal he established himself in Trás-os-Montes, NE of the kingdom and with the passing of time the name became what I have today. I even got a coat of arms!

[chris]

You forgot the motto:

"Per astra ad vorago"

Chris

edit: found a better word