GRAVES FAMILY BULLETIN
A
Free, Occasional, Online Summary of Items of Interest to Descendants of all
Families of Graves, Greaves, Grieves, Grave, and other spelling variations
Worldwide
Vol.
11, No. 2, March 29, 2009
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Copyright
© 2009 by the Graves Family Association and Kenneth V. Graves. All rights reserved.
Information
on how to start a free subscription to this bulletin and how to be removed from
the subscription list is at the end of this bulletin. If you received this bulletin directly, then you are already
subscribed.
Visit
the GFA web site at http://www.gravesfa.org
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CONTENTS:
**
General Comments
**
Trip to England in June 2009
**
Graves Gathering in San Antonio, Texas This August
**
How You Can Learn More About Your Family and Its Ancestry
**
Free DNA Testing for Those in Britain
**
Updates to the GFA Website
**
Reading Old Graves Family Bulletins
**
New Website Maps Surnames Worldwide
**
Comment About Ancestry of Graves/Greaves Families
**
More on the Family of Capt. Thomas Graves of Virginia
**
Recent International Conference on Genetic Genealogy in Houston, Texas
**
To Submit Material to this Bulletin & Other Things
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GENERAL
COMMENTS
This
is only the second issue of this bulletin for 2009. Usually they are published more frequently, but too many things
have interfered the last couple of months.
However, there have been many exciting things happening, as you will see
in the following articles.
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TRIP
TO ENGLAND IN JUNE 2009
There
is still time to sign up for the trip to England this June. To do so, either contact me or go to the GFA
website to look at the brochure, and then contact the travel agency.
We
are adjusting the tour agenda slightly to not only include Beeley in
Derbyshire, where some of the earliest family members lived, but also to
include Lincolnshire, since a significant number of those on the tour have
roots in that area.
Have
you always wanted to go to England but thought it was just a dream? Are you descended from a Graves or Greaves
family in England, and would you love to visit the places they lived and meet
some of their descendants who still live there? Now is your chance to fulfill your dream.
The
tour brochure and the registration form are on the GFA website in PDF format.
Spread
the word about the tour. Invite your
relatives and any friends who might like to go along. We would really like to have as many people on the tour as
possible, especially since it will probably reduce the cost for all
participants. Let me know if you want
more tour brochures or want me to send some directly to anyone else.
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GRAVES
GATHERING IN SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS THIS AUGUST
The
Southwest Chapter of the Graves Family Association will be holding a Graves
reunion in San Antonio, Texas, Saturday, Aug. 8, 2009, from 8:30 a.m. until
4:30 p.m. It is hoped and expected that
many people will arrive on Friday and stay until Sunday. This will be for all Graves and Greaves
families. Ken Graves may be attending
and speaking on subjects of interest to the families. More details will be published as they are available. For more information and to help, contact
Ron Graves at gravesronn@cs.com.
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HOW
YOU CAN LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR FAMILY AND ITS ANCESTRY
I
often hear from people who are discouraged about their inability to find
earlier ancestors. They often tend to
assume that if they can’t find what they are looking for online (especially on
family trees submitted to Ancestry.com) or in published books, then it doesn’t
exist. That is not correct! Many answers can be found if we know what to
look for, where to look, and what it means when we find it.
In
fact, much material of genealogical interest has been microfilmed, but only
some of that has been digitized and put online. And much material has not even been microfilmed.
So
how can you get past your “brick walls” and find the answers you are looking
for? First of all, you need to do more
than just look for the answers that someone else has found. Even if you find them, they may be
wrong. You need to look at the
pertinent original records and draw conclusions from them. To do that, I suggest you take a genealogy
class on how to do research, where to find records, and what records are apt to
be helpful. Join a local, state, and/or
national genealogical society. In the
U.S., good ones include the National Genealogical Society in Arlington, VA, and
the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston, MA. They both have websites and publish
excellent magazines. There are also
some good books on how to do research.
You can go to genealogical conferences (NGS has one in Raleigh, NC, May
13-16, 2009).
In
the latest issue of the NGS Magazine (Jan.-March 2009) are several excellent
articles showing how to do research, including one by Ronald Ames Hill. His essential elements for creating his
recent book (for a U.S. family) were:
(1)
Try
to contact those who have done research on the family of interest.
(2)
Learn
what is known of the family structure.
(3)
Try
to learn about the issues that are in controversy or are disputed.
(4)
Repeat
all the old research. Study all the
original documents cited.
(5)
Identify
the record classes that have been overlooked.
For him, this involved county tax records, deed books, probate records,
and county court minutes.
His
record search required numerous visits to the Family History Library in Salt
Lake City. (There are also local branch
Family History Libraries all over the U.S. and in many other countries, where
microfilm records can be ordered.) For
records not yet filmed, he spent a few weeks traveling to courthouses in
several states, and hired researchers to find and photocopy deeds and other
records in other states. He believes
his most essential activities were to thoroughly search every record he could
find, first in Salt Lake City and then in local repositories, and to search
chancery and circuit court records.
If some of this is beyond your interest,
time, or financial resources, you can hire a professional genealogist to do it,
or encourage relatives to help you. If
you want to start a research team for your part of the family or for your group
of families (shown by DNA to share a common ancestor), I will be happy to
suggest ways to do that and help you get in touch with interested relatives.
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FREE
DNA TESTING FOR THOSE IN BRITAIN
Because
it is so important to get descendants of the families of Greaves, Graves,
Grieves, and other spellings in the U.K. and Ireland to take part in our DNA
study, we will continue to pay the full cost for Y-DNA testing for male
descendants with any variation of the surname who provides enough ancestral
information to be helpful to the study, and who are not too closely related to
someone who has already been tested. It
is our goal to be able to connect all the families that are related, and DNA
testing is the only tool that will let us know for sure that families share a
common ancestor. Please help to find
people who are willing to be tested.
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UPDATES
TO THE GFA WEBSITE
A
number of pages on the website have been revised, including the page for
notable ancestors. Admiral Samuel
Graves (responsible for all British naval operations before and during the
American Revolution) and John Graves Simcoe (godson of Adm. Samuel Graves and a
major shaper of modern-day Canada) have been added, and additions have been
made to the section for poet and author Robert Graves. All these men are part of genealogy 68, the
Graves family of Yorkshire and Mickleton Manor, Gloucestershire. Additions have also been made to the
discussion for former soccer star Jimmy Greaves.
Changes
have also been made to the pages for GFA officers and volunteers, both in the
“About GFA” section of the website.
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READING
OLD GRAVES FAMILY BULLETINS
Did
you miss a bulletin? Have you just started receiving the Graves Family Bulletin
and are curious about what was in some of the previous ones. You can always
read any of the old bulletins, from 1997 through the present, by going to the
GFA website at http://www.gravesfa.org,
clicking on the Products tab at the top of the page, clicking on the Bulletin
link, and then scrolling down to the issue that you are interested in. Although
there is not now an index to the articles, I am hoping to provide one soon.
===============================================
NEW
WEBSITE MAPS SURNAMES WORLDWIDE
An
interesting new website was recently called to my attention by Dick Eastman’s
Online Genealogy Newsletter. It is
called Public Profiler/worldnames at http://www.publicprofiler.org/worldnames. The site plots eight million last names
using data from electoral rolls and phone directories. The site covers 300
million people in 26 countries, showing the origins of names and where families
have moved. The site also reveals which of the five million first names
(forenames) are most closely associated with different surnames and lists the
top regions and cities for each surname.
I
have extracted information from the site for the Graves, Greaves, Grave,
Grieves, Grieve, Greeves, and Greave spellings, and put it on the Surname Distribution
page of Graves Family Association website at http://www.gravesfa.org/distribution.html. It is interesting to see the geographical
distribution and the frequencies of the various spellings in different
countries and within each country. The
Graves spelling is the most common, followed by Greaves, with Grieve and Grave
much less common. The Graves spelling
is the most common in the U.S., with the states of Tennessee, Mississippi and
Arkansas having the highest frequency.
Greaves is most common in the U.K. (as has been noted before in this
bulletin and on the website), with the highest frequencies in Sheffield,
Birmingham, Leeds, Nottingham and Manchester.
The
highest frequency of the Grieve surname is in Australia and New Zealand, and in
Scotland. The Grave surname is most
common in the Netherlands, Norway and France, while the surname in the U.K. is
most common in Carlisle and Keswick.
The
most common forenames for the Graves surname are John, Robert, James, David,
and William. For the Greaves surname,
the most common forenames are John, David, Michael, Margaret, and Andrew.
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COMMENT
ABOUT ANCESTRY OF GRAVES/GREAVES FAMILIES
I
occasionally am asked what the parentage and ancestry is for the earliest
Graves/Greaves ancestor in a genealogy.
My answer, of course, is that if I knew the answer I would revise the
genealogy and put that person as the earliest known ancestor. The first person in all genealogies is
always the earliest known Graves/Greaves ancestor.
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MORE
ON THE FAMILY OF CAPT. THOMAS GRAVES OF VIRGINIA
Much
information about the family of Capt. Thomas Graves of VA (the 1608 immigrant,
genealogy 169) is on the GFA website, and I have written about this family
numerous times in this bulletin. The
most recent article was in the vol. 10, no. 11, Nov. 26, 2008 issue, where I
explained what we know, what we need to learn, and some of the ways we might be
able to find the answers.
As
I have explained, it was once thought that all the Graves descendants in
Virginia were descended from Capt. Thomas Graves, since no other early Graves
immigrants with descendants were known.
However, as a result of our DNA study, we found that the supposed
descendants of Capt. Thomas Graves actually consisted of four different major
DNA groups. This means that there were
four different male ancestors, only one of whom could have been Capt. Thomas
Graves. Based on my evaluation of the
present evidence, I have removed what is now genealogy 270 from genealogy 169,
and do not believe there is any possibility that this group is descended from
Capt. Thomas Graves. Because the group
descended via John2 and Ralph3 has more solid
documentation, I believe that this line is more likely to be that of Capt.
Thomas Graves. However, it is not
impossible that the line from Francis Graves (previously believed to be the
youngest son of Capt. Thomas Graves, now separated as genealogy 220) was really
the only true son. The DNA of the
groups of descendants of sons John and Francis match known (although different)
Graves ancestors (as explained previously).
The last group of descendants is from son Thomas, and the DNA of his descendants
does not match that of any known Graves/Greaves DNA group, suggesting that he
may have been adopted, illegitimate, etc.
Please note that these are only my opinions, and we don’t have absolute
proof.
We
all hope that future research and more sophisticated DNA testing will some day
give us the answer. I made some
suggestions in the previous article.
However, for those of you who don’t like my tentative conclusions, you
need to take some positive action.
Suggest a way to prove that contrary conclusions are correct and do
something about it. We have learned a
huge amount about this family in just a few years. We never knew there were so many errors in the genealogy, and now
we have not only found many of the errors but have corrected many of them. But if you expect me to provide all the
answers now, that is not going to happen.
Time, money and expertise are limited.
If we are to find the desired answers, others of you need to step
forward to spearhead some part of the effort.
For us to succeed, the Graves Family Association needs to be a
collaborative enterprise.
In
addition to the suggestions I have previously made to find the answers, an
additional approach that was discussed at our January meeting in Arlington, VA,
was to work with hereditary societies (such as the Jamestowne Society) and
their genealogists. I would be
delighted to have someone volunteer to help with that.
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RECENT
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON GENETIC GENEALOGY IN HOUSTON, TEXAS
On
March 14 and 15, I attended the 5th International Conference on
Genetic Genealogy, organized by Family Tree DNA. This event, usually held annually, is mainly for administrators
of DNA projects, and features renowned experts on genetic genealogy and related
subjects. I have now attended four of
the five conferences, missing only the fourth one. This time there were at least two other Graves descendants
attending, Mic Barnette (genealogy 220) and Juvanne Martin (genealogy 250), and
possibly others I didn’t know about.
For
anyone interested but not attending the conference, the best summary I have
seen of much of it is on Steve Danko’s blog at http://stephendanko.com/blog/2009/03/.
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ABOUT THIS BULLETIN:
This
bulletin is written and edited by Kenneth V. Graves,
ken.graves@gravesfa.org. Ken Graves was
also editor of the Graves Family Newsletter (no longer published). This bulletin will contain announcements and
news of special interest to Graves descendants with Internet access. It will not contain queries, genealogies,
photos, and the kind of in-depth articles that used to appear in the Graves
Family Newsletter.
TO
SUBMIT MATERIAL TO THIS BULLETIN:
Send
any material you would like to have included in this bulletin to
ken.graves@gravesfa.org. The editor
reserves the right to accept, edit or reject any material submitted.
TO
JOIN THE GRAVES FAMILY ASSOCIATION:
If
you do not already belong to the GFA, you can join by sending $20 per year to
Graves Family Association, 20 Binney Circle, Wrentham, MA 02093 (more details
on GFA website). Payment may also be
sent electronically via PayPal by going to www.paypal.com
and sending payment to gfa@gravesfa.org.
Benefits include access to the “members only” section of the website,
membership directory, and help with learning more about your Graves/Greaves
family. The purpose of the GFA is to
bring together as many descendants as possible to work toward learning more
about the Graves/Greaves families, to help other descendants, and to instill
pride in our ancestry.
COPYRIGHTS:
Although
the contents of this bulletin are copyrighted by the Graves Family Association
and Kenneth V. Graves, you are hereby granted rights, unless otherwise
specified, to re-distribute articles to other parties for non-commercial
purposes only. Do not re-distribute the
newsletter in its entirety.
TO
SUBSCRIBE OR UNSUBSCRIBE TO THIS BULLETIN:
To subscribe
to this bulletin, send an e-mail message to ken.graves@gravesfa.org. Please include your full name. Your postal mailing address and information
on your Graves/Greaves ancestry would also be appreciated, although not
essential.
To
remove your name from this subscription list, send an e-mail message to
ken.graves@gravesfa.org asking to be removed.