Six Degrees of Separation

We were looking up Lisa Cave, who will become an assistant professor of economics and business next year (InCommon, April 13). Her website is hosted by the University of Kentucky’s Gatton College of Business and Economics.

And the first thing we saw on the Gatton home page was: the von Allmen School of Accountancy.

It’s not our own Peter, as it turns out, but another branch of the relatively small von Allmen family.

Peter says there are two branches of the family in the United States, though probably fewer than 75 people altogether. One is descended from Karl von Allmen, who arrived in New Haven, Connecticut, around 1900 from the Mürren area of Switzerland. He was Peter’s paternal great-grandfather.

The other branch is based in Kentucky. “We are no doubt related, but the link between the families is probably from about the 16th century,” Peter says. “In Gimmelwald, Switzerland, right near where my family came from, almost everyone is named von Allmen.”

According to the von Allmen website, the family goes back to about 1295.