Thanks! I just now got an email from my father-in-law, who found our Mash Hall in the Ancestery.com database. Apparently Mash was the name he went by, but his actual given name was even more unusual---Meeshack! Is that a surname as well? Or maybe biblical? The ancestry file says the family were Scots who first settled in the Ulster area of Ireland before immigrating to the U.S., settling first in Pennsylvania. Melinda -----Original Message----- From: LaChance [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, June 04, 2001 12:15 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [SURNAME-ORIGINS] Mash Hall ca 1830-1907 MASH (English) Variation of "MARSH", a topographic name for someone who lived by or in a marsh or fen. Source: A Dictionary of Surnames by Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges. Barbara Melinda Strong wrote: > Just discovered the full name of my husband's 3rd great grandfather, Mash > Hall who was born in Tennessee in the 1830s, and moved to Missouri and then > Collin Co, TX after the Civil War. > > His first name is unmistakably MASH. This is per both census records and > deed records. > > Anyone ever seen this as either a first or last name? It is new to me. > > ============================== > Shop Ancestry - Everything you need to Discover, Preserve & Celebrate > your heritage! > http://shop.myfamily.com/ancestrycatalog ============================== Join the RootsWeb WorldConnect Project: Linking the world, one GEDCOM at a time. http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com