I'm a Dawn from TN. I also have an old typewriter rendered piece of paper from someone in my family about our family. It states that the "earliest information on the family is in Holland under the name Van Daughn. Around 1600 A.D. they migrated to Scotland. Then in the early 1700's they migrated to North Carolina. Then at the time of the Rev. War in 1775 they changed their name to Dawn."