Clan Lafford

Lafford.net: The World Wide Lafford Network

By Llewellyn Lafford & Laurel O’Donnell

Lafford Photo Sharing Living Laffords Clan Lafford Links of Interest Lafford Reunions

This site is comprised of four sections:

New Feature:
Lafford Photo Sharing

We are using flickr.com to make it easy to share photos and have topical discussions with other Lafford members.
You must have a flickr membership (which is free) and have joined the Clan Lafford photo group by invitation. Send me an email (Clan[at]Lafford[dot]net) with your flickr screenname and I'll add you.

Here are our current photo collections, categorized by Event-Place-Year:
(These links work only if you are in the Clan Lafford flickr group.)

Living Laffords

A recently compiled list of 300 living Laffords assembled entirely from the public record.

Clan Lafford Links of Interest

Fascinating miscellanea culled from the World Wide Web, including:
Genealogical References, Lafford Place Names, Lafford Businesses, Laffords in Fine & Performing Arts, Ecclesiastical Laffords, Engineers, Scientist, Educators, and more . . .

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Lafford Reunions

Due primarily to the efforts of Julia Lafford Welbon, following are made possible:

Previous Reunions

Click on the thumbnail
for enlargements and details:
2004 Hereford 2004 Hereford Reunion
1999 Norwich 1999 Norwich
1997 Wells 1997 Wells
1996 St. David’s, Wales 1996 St. David’s

As well as Chichester and Derby (photos coming).

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A Brief History

When we were children in the 1950s and ’60s, my brother, sister and I played a game as the family traveled across North America on vacation.  Upon arriving in a hotel or motel, we would open the nightstand, extract the local telephone book from under the Gideon Bible, and search for fellow Laffords.  We never found any.  Naturally, we came to the conclusion that we were the only Lafford family extant on the continent and probably in the entire New World. We were likely the very last pioneers of a once-hardy breed on this humble orb.

How wrong we were!  How naive!  What random and primitive research methods we employed!   How uncomputerized our lives!

In the mid-1980’s, well before the advent of the Internet, I received an unsolicited long distance phone call from a man who introduced himself as John Lafford from England, traveling in Texas on business.  Calling from his hotel room, he had somehow discovered my name in the New York City telephone book.  He requested only that he might send the results of his genealogical research on the Lafford family, including my father’s branch.  I was somewhat skeptical, but as he demanded no remuneration whatsoever and wasn't pushing me to buy a coat of arms or initialed beer stein, it seemed I had nothing to lose.  In a few days, I received a large cardboard tube containing a panoramic genealogical chart printed on multiple sheets of blueprint paper, painstakingly taped together.  John, who couldn’t have been more legitimate, was a plasma physicist and designer of carbon fiber racing bicycles. For him, blueprints were the natural means of expressing his research and perhaps the only option to render room-sized charts.  Recognizing a potential symbiotic relationship when I saw it, I put John in touch with my father (Lindsay Arthur of Tempe, AZ) and Laffords have been coming out of the woodwork ever since.

In the intervening years, it has been a pleasure to discover that we are far from alone!  Laffords are prolifically scattered across the land and the continents.  We have touched all parts of the world and followed many careers.   Laffords are business folk, artists, innkeepers, musicians, educators, engineers, actors, waiters, taxi drivers . . .  (I can personally vouch for the last four, myself.)  As you follow the links, converse with each other, and peruse the pictures, marvel at the diversity, the history and the wonder of humankind.  Multiple fortuitous connections and several emotional reunions have resulted from that first contact.  While often the chance to share knowledge of our forebears has brought us together, it is the resulting developing friendships we cherish and preserve.

Kudos

Credit must be given to the following individuals, whose combined efforts, genealogical expertise and traditional bare-hands digging, all started the ball rolling.

Thanks to their combined efforts, hundreds of living Laffords and thousands preceding them were traced and related; past generations made real to current ones.  From the first recorded appearance in 1645 of Adam Lafford in Chiseldon, Wiltshire, many branches have grown and prospered throughout England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.  Other continents and centuries continue to reveal Lafford lines in Australia, South Africa, Nova Scotia, New England . . .

The work continues as we attempt to connect all the dots, trace the relationships, grow the ultimate tree.

Your Privacy

Make Contact, Take Part!

Future Plans

This site, born on 1-January-2004, is dedicated to a fascinating group of people who have the fortune of being more or less closely related.  I hope it can bring us together spiritually, if not physically, for our mutual enjoyment and benefit.

-- Llewellyn Lafford

Updated 24-July-2007

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