A few weeks ago, I discovered a convoluted and distant familial relation with a coworker’s wife, just through casual conversation: His wife’s aunt married my great-grandfather’s cousin. (Or was it nephew? I had worked it out and am too lazy now to go back and look because it doesn’t really matter). This branch of my family was from the Taylorsville/Statesville area of North Carolina, which is where her family still lives. That coworker brought me a newspaper from Taylorsville, though it’s all modern news and people I don’t know anything about, but still kind of neat.

Today, I walked up on that same coworker having a conversation about his German heritage and the meaning of his surname (“unruly”) and I once again brought up my Taylorsville folks: The Mussgnugs. He asked what it meant, and I had to look it up. I honestly never thought about it. Some genealogist I am.

Instead of scanning today, I’m linking to this information about the Mussgnugs. The author takes a stab at what he thinks Mussgnug translates to from German, but instead, I took “Muss” and “Genug” and plopped them into Google Translate. The result: “Has Enough.” I’ll interpret that as saying my folks came from humble and modest background.

There’s a brief history on the Mussgnug/Mussgenug/Moose family here. My Mooses came from Anthony Moose in Taylorsville.