28 February 2007

Prefabrication

Mike Nifong is the name of the DA who started the Duke lacrosse case. I have a lot of questions about the whole affair, but I will stick to the one that's been bothering me for a while:

What kind of name is Nifong???

I poked around in some records and found that the Nifongs have been in North Carolina for a long time. George Nifong, the DA's 4th great-grandfather, is on the 1790 census in Rowan County. George's father Balthasar came to Pennsylvania from Germany in 1748 with the last name Neufang. The name was quickly corrupted to Nifong (North Carolina branch) or Knifong (Missouri branch).

So you can see that the DA's name has been around for quite some time and is not just recently trumped up.

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