Geneology

So a while back my sister mentioned to me that when she was at the Experience Music Project (one of those touristy things to do in Seattle that I haven't done yet because no one has come to visit me), she saw something about a man who worked for Gibson back around 1920 who was famous for making mandolins by the name of Lloyd Loar. Naturally she was curious about this, so she did some web searching and turned up that he was somehow related to a baseball player called Lefty Grove. Now, we knew from this old book of my father's family geneology that had floated around my father's family that we were somehow related to Lefty Grove, so that settled that.

Well, earlier tonight I was looking at the website for the UW Extension program and noticed that they had a course on Geneology. This got me to thinking about it again, so I decided to do some poking around of my own. I soon found The Loar's Place, which turned out to be an absolute treasure trove. A distant relative has poured an amazing amount of effort into compiling records and placing them online. I will have to explore this more and get in touch with him.

As for the relation, it turns out that Lloyd Loar, Lefty Grove, and myself are descendants of Jacob Loar, a settler who arrived in Maryland in 1774, married, and had eleven children. By my reckoning, Lloyd and Lefty were third cousins to each other, and third cousins twice removed to me.

Isn't the Internet amazing?