Hi everyone, My name is Melvyn THORN, Born 30/04/1944, in Nottingham, England. I have been doing my family tree now for 17 years and have got back as far as a Joshua THORN who moved to Somerset, England in about 1700. All his children and the next generations remained in Somerset until about 1880 when they began to disperse through England and Wales. My wife Pauline, and myself have been trying for the past 10 years to trace where Joshua came from to Somerset but to date without success. As indicated in a number of the groups e-mails you do have to look at Thorn & Thorne but also Thorns. I notice from one of the e-mails that THORN came from Ireland and Scotland, but they also originate in Germany and Holland. There is still a small town called THORN in Holland and upto 1946 at the end of the second world war there was a city called THORN in Germany, which was renamed TORUN after the new borders were decided and it became part of East Germany. According to the Family History experts and teachers in England, THORN is a multi-derivative name and there will be many branches of Thorns that will not be connected to each other. The THORN surname is very common over the South-Western Counties of Devon, Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire and this is where the majority of the British Thorns originated from. I do also know that there are Thorns in Scandinavia. I have an access data base with over a thousand Thorn(e)s on it, and still adding to it (All British side I'm afraid). Hope this is of some use to you all. Mel