452 Professor Elias Loomis. 



Joseph Loomis bearing the Loomis name. He regarded it as 

 entirely provisional, printed to help himself in making further 

 researches, and to excite interest in others of the name, who 

 would thus be led to give additional information, or correction 

 of errors. 



Finding that to a limited extent only could he hope by cor- 

 respondence to gain the information desired, he now undertook 

 in his vacations to canvass the country by personal visits. He 

 collected lists of names from every available source, from cata- 

 logues of every description, from city directories, county direct- 

 ories, county maps and county tax lists, and he compiled from 

 these sources lists of all the Loomis names he could hnd. Arrang- 

 ing these names by counties he undertook to visit each family 

 personally. In this way he made a pretty thorough canvass of 

 every part of New England and New York State, of nearly 

 every part of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, of the northern 

 part of Ohio, and of some of the western cities. 



After five years of these researches he published the second 

 edition of the Loomis Genealogy, in which were given 8,686 

 names* of persons that bore the Loomis name, descendants of 

 Joseph Loomis in the male branches. 



Five years later, in 1880, Professor Loomis printed in two 

 additional volumes a provisional list of 19,000 descendants of 

 Joseph Loomis in the female branches. Large as was this list, 

 he did not regard it as more than a first outline of a census of 

 the descendants of the original emigrant, and he hoped in the 

 near future to publish an additional volume. For this he has 

 left in manuscript many corrections and large additions that 

 will be of use to the future Loomis Genealogist. 



Am I tarrying too long upon the vacation work of Professor 

 Loomis ? If so, I plead on this occasion that among these 

 direct descendants of Joseph Loomis there were enrolled more 

 than 200 graduates of Yale College, and nearly 100 more of 

 our graduates have married members of this numerous family. 



Professor Loomis was doubtless more widely known as the 

 author of mathematical text-books than as a worker in new 

 fields in science. Shortly after coming to New York, he pre- 

 pared a text-book in Algebra. The market was ready for 



