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Updated June 9, 2019

Family name origins & meanings

  • English : habitational name for someone from Dunster in Somerset, recorded in 1138 as Dunestore ‘craggy pinnacle (Old English torr) of a man named Dun(n)’.
  • Henry Dunster emigrated to MA in 1640 from Bury, Lancashire, England, and was made the first president of Harvard College (1640–54) almost immediately upon arrival in MA.

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