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.
13, No. 7, December 28, 2011
===============================================
Copyright
© 2011 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
===============================================
CONTENTS:
**
General Comments
**
Reminder About GFA Meeting in Arlington, VA, Jan. 15
**
Reminder About Special Offer on DNA Testing from Family Tree DNA
**
Why Use Family Tree DNA for DNA Testing?
**
Using GEDMatch.com & Ancestor-Projects.com for Autosomal DNA Matching
**
Surname Information from the 2000 U.S. Census
**
1940 U.S. Census to be Released April 2, 2012
**
Queries Relating to Graves Families
**
To Submit Material to this Bulletin & Other Things
===============================================
GENERAL
COMMENTS
Sarah
and I wish all of you a very happy and healthy Christmas season, and much
personal and genealogical success in the New Year.
Please
take advantage of the DNA testing offer mentioned again in this issue of the
Bulletin, if you have not already done so. Also, consider joining the Graves Family Association page on
Facebook; it has become an effective means of communication.
===============================================
REMINDER
ABOUT GFA MEETING IN ARLINGTON, VA, JANUARY 15
As
announced in the Dec. 7 issue of the Bulletin, there will be a meeting of the
Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the Graves Family Association in the Williamsburg Room
of the Army Navy Country Club, Arlington, VA, at 12 noon, Sunday, January
15. Attendees will be eating the
ANCC Sunday buffet at $22 per person.
Payment does not need to be made in advance. All Graves and Greaves
descendants from all families are urged to attend. To let them know you expect to be there, contact Ernie
Graves at erniegraves@compuserve.com.
Schedule
will be: registration, 11:30 AM-12:00 noon, buffet lunch, 12:00 noon-12:45 PM,
announcements, 12:30-12:45 PM, program, 12:45-2:00 PM. I will be available after the program
for additional questions and discussion.
===============================================
REMINDER
ABOUT SPECIAL OFFER ON DNA TESTING FROM FAMILY TREE DNA
The
special reduced price off on DNA testing from Family Tree DNA will end at
midnight, December 31, and all new tests and upgrades must be paid for by
then. For the success of our
effort at connecting all the various genealogies and finding your earlier
Graves/Greaves ancestry, it is important for all families to be tested. To inquire about possible financial help, contact
Ken Graves at ken.graves@gravesfa.org.
To
see which families have already been tested for Y-DNA, find your genealogy on
the Charts page at http://www.gravesfa.org/charts.html. Although the information on that page
about which genealogies (families) have had a male with a Graves/Greaves
surname take a Y-DNA is not completely up-to-date, it is close. If you see a red “No” in the DNA test
column, then a test is needed to find which other genealogy or genealogies your
part of the family is connected to.
Now is the time to order a test and have a family member tested!
You
can see more details in the article in an earlier issue of this Bulletin at http://www.gravesfa.org/gfb13-5.html,
including prices.
===============================================
WHY
USE FAMILY TREE DNA FOR DNA TESTING?
This
question was asked recently by someone who pointed out that there are companies
other than Family Tree DNA that do DNA testing.
There
are a number of other companies that also provide DNA testing, especially Y-DNA
testing and Mitochondrial DNA testing. 23andMe offers autosomal DNA testing
which I recommend if you want to find even more matches after you have tested
at Family Tree DNA. (And testing at 23andMe is the thing to do if you are
primarily interested in the health and disease aspects of DNA testing.) But if
people test at a variety of companies, it is very difficult to compare their
results, and comparing results is one of the most important parts of the
process. No other testing company has nearly as many surname and other projects
(most have none), the variety of tests, and the level of company-provided
customer support plus volunteer support (like from me). I have no connection with
Family Tree DNA and receive no benefits or payments of any kind from them. We
have used them for 10 years and the results are just better that those from
other companies.
If you or someone you know has already tested at any
company that used the Sorenson 33 or 46-marker Y-DNA test, including
Ancestry.com, Gene Tree, and Sorenson’s SMGF, you can transfer those results to
Family Tree DNA for a small additional fee, as explained at http://www.familytreedna.com/landing/ydna-transfer.aspx. The reasons given there for
transferring to FTDNA are:
·
Family Tree DNA is the world leader in DNA testing
for genealogy with the largest genetic genealogy databases.
·
Over 90% of genealogists choose to test with Family
Tree DNA, creating the largest community of active genealogists in the
industry.
·
Transferring will allow you to join projects,
communicate with experts, and network with people who share your interests and
your heritage.
If the testing was with DNA Heritage, the results
can be transferred as explained at http://www.familytreedna.com/landing/dna-heritage.aspx,
since DNA Heritage has been acquired by FTDNA.
===============================================
USING
GEDMATCH.COM & ANCESTOR-PROJECTS.COM FOR AUTOSOMAL DNA MATCHING
Shannon
Christmas wrote on our GFA Facebook page: “I notice that
some of us have tested with 23andMe while others have tested with Family Tree
DNA's Family Finder. Generally, those who have tested with one service are
unable to view matches they would have seen had they tested with the other
service.” The following article
submitted, by Shannon, describes a good solution to this problem. If you have questions, you can contact
her on the GFA Facebook page or at her email address given below.
For
those who have done autosomal DNA testing with FamilyTreeDNA’s Family Finder
and/or 23andMe’s Relative Finder, there’s a new free tool for getting more out of genetic genealogy: GEDMatch.com. GEDMatch.com allows you to upload your
DNA data files and your GEDCOM file to find and explore connections to
previously unknown relatives that are in both FTDNA’s database and 23andMe’s
database. To get started, go to http://gedmatch.com/
and scroll down to UPLOAD YOUR DATA FILES.
GEDMatch’s
sister site, http://ancestor-projects.com/,
allows those who have uploaded their data on GEDMatch to join free ancestry projects where
“people with common ancestry can share their information with each other.” Shannon Christmas has created such a
project for descendants of Captain Thomas Graves (Gen 169) to aid GFA’s DNA
initiative. The goal is to pinpoint shared DNA segments inherited from common
Graves ancestors in Genealogy 169 (http://www.gravesfa.org/gen169.htm).
To participate in
the Captain Thomas Graves of Jamestown Project:
·
Upload your GEDCOM and DNA data files to http://gedmatch.com/
·
Register at ancestor-projects: http://ancestor-projects.com/register.php
·
Using the email address you used to register with
ancestor-projects, email Project Administrator shannon.christmas04@post.harvard.edu with “CAPT.
THOMAS GRAVES PROJECT” in the subject line. Include the name(s) of the project
participant(s) in the body of your email.
·
Try whenever possible to add only the eldest living
generation of Graves descendants in your family to the project; too many close
relatives can distort the data.
===============================================
SURNAME
INFORMATION FROM THE 2000 U.S. CENSUS
The
following information is from the U.S. Census Bureau website at http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/data/2000surnames/index.html. For a shorter version of that, use http://tinyurl.com/2eba2ut.
Tabulations of all surnames occurring 100 or more times in the Census
2000 returns are provided in the files listed on that website. The first link
on that website page explains the methodology used for identifying and editing
names data. The second link provides an Excel file of the top 1000 surnames.
The third link provides zipped Excel and CSV (comma separated) files of the
complete list of 151,671 names. The top ten surnames are:
Name |
Number Of Occurrences |
Smith |
2,376,206 |
Johnson |
1,857,160 |
Williams |
1,534,042 |
Brown |
1,380,145 |
Jones |
1,362,755 |
Miller |
1,127,803 |
Davis |
1,072,335 |
Garcia |
858,289 |
Rodriguez |
804,240 |
Wilson |
783,051 |
A
racial/ethnic breakout of the surnames is available also. The distribution for the Graves surname
is shown below. It is interesting
to see that more than 23% of the number identify themselves as black. This indicates that black Graves
families in the U.S. are under-represented in the genealogies on the GFA
website.
Of
the top 1000 surnames in the U.S. in 2000, only the spelling variation of
Graves appeared. Other spelling
variations undoubtedly appear in another file that can be downloaded containing
all surnames occurring 100 or more times (151,671 surnames).
Surname |
Graves |
Rank |
340 |
Count |
82179 |
Number/100,000 |
30.46 |
Cumulative
number/100,000 |
28421.39 |
Percent
White |
71.95 |
Percent
Black |
23.56 |
Percent
API (Asian Pacific Islanders) |
0.37 |
Percent
Asian |
0.72 |
Percent
2 or more races |
1.74 |
Percent
Hispanic |
1.66 |
===============================================
1940
U.S. CENSUS TO BE RELEASED APRIL 2, 2012
The
1940 U.S. census will be made available by the National Archives starting at 9
a.m. on Monday, April 2, 2012.
There will initially be no index, but indexing by private organizations
will be proceeding as discussed below.
The National Archives FAQ page on the 1940 census reports that until
there is an index, “You can locate people by identifying the enumeration
district in which they lived in 1940 and then browsing the Census population
schedules for that enumeration district.”
If you don’t know where
an ancestor lived in 1940, you can follow the suggestions on the Start Your 1940 Census Research Page.
(See
“Preparing for the Opening of
the 1940 Census”
by Lynn Betlock, Editor, The Weekly Genealogist (NEHGS newsletter), Dec. 7, 2011, http://www.americanancestors.org/wg-vol-14-no-49/.)
Steve Morse's 1940 census information page contains numerous
strategies for locating ancestors using his free One-Step tools and a source checklist that
might yield 1940 addresses. Mr. Morse also provides useful background on the
1940 census.
As
reported by Dick Eastman, EOGN, Dec. 19, 2011, two companies and one non-profit
have combined forces to produce indexes for the 1940 U.S. census. A press release states: “Three leading genealogy
organizations, Archives.com,
FamilySearch
International, and findmypast.com,
announced today they are joining forces to launch the 1940 US Census Community
Project. The ambitious project aims to engage online volunteers to quickly
publish a searchable, high quality name index to the 1940 US Census after it is
released in April 2012 by the National Archives and Record Administration of
the United States (NARA). The highly anticipated 1940 US Census is expected to
be the most popular US record collection released to date. Its completion will
allow anyone to search the record collection by name for free online. Learn
more about this exciting initiative or how to volunteer at www.the1940census.com. A FamilySearch project leader said,
“We’re looking for 100,000 additional indexers for this project.”
It was interesting to see that on Aug. 17, Ancestry.com stated: “Ancestry.com, the world’s
largest online family history resource, today announced that both the images
and indexes to the 1940 U.S. Federal Census will be made free to search,
browse, and explore in the United States when this important collection
commences streaming onto the website in mid-April 2012. When complete, more than 3.8 million
original document images containing 130 million plus records will be available
to search by more than 45 fields, including name, gender, race, street address,
county and state. It will be Ancestry.com’s most comprehensively indexed set of
historical records to date.” I am
not clear about whether Ancestry.com will be conducting a separate indexing
effort, or whether they will just use the one created by the group described
above.
===============================================
QUERIES
RELATING TO GRAVES FAMILIES
I
don’t usually include queries in the Bulletin, but both of these are somewhat
different from the usual problems.
Stephen
Edmondson wrote that he is a descendant of Joseph and Priscilla Edmondson of
Craven Co., NC, through their son John who moved to Georgia before 1784. They
have always believed she was Priscilla Graves. “When Joseph Edmondson left Essex County
about 1713, he put two children of his first marriage in the care of Joanna
Smith. She had to sue for her childcare charges and the Essex Court
required Joseph's brother Benjamin to pay her from Joseph's assets in Essex.
Joseph soon married Priscilla, buying land from Capt. Richard Graves and
his wife Hannah in 1716. Hannah was the widow of Farnifold Green and mother of
James Green who married Joseph's older daughter Mary, of the first marriage,
who was born about 1710. Richard Graves continued to live near Joseph. A
Smith lived near him, too, for whom Smith's Neck was named. One source
says Capt. Graves was a ship-owner from Essex County, possibly the mode by
which Joseph travelled to Craven County NC.” Richard Graves was a son of Francis Greaves of genealogy
220. If anyone can help verify
that Priscilla was a Graves or provide more information, please contact Stephen
at swedmondson[at]windstream.net.
Sally Cihos in California has
a copy of the 1896 book by John Card Graves (Genealogy of the Graves Family of America, vol. 1) that is mostly
about the family of Thomas Graves of Hartford, CT & Hatfield, MA (gen. 168)
“that I'd like to pass on to a relative of a deceased neighbor. The neighbor gave
the book to another neighbor many years ago. Then that recipient moved and gave
the book to me. Its last owner appears to be a descendant of Albert
Graves (number 1161 in the book). I believe she was the daughter of Henry
Oliver Graves (number 2263). There are some typewritten pages from Leah Graves
(stenographer in WWI), who was Henry's sister. Also Leah's acceptance into the
D.A.R.” Please contact me if you can help.
===============================================
ABOUT THIS BULLETIN:
This
bulletin is written and edited by Kenneth V. Graves, ken.graves@gravesfa.org.
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.
COPYRIGHTS:
Although
the contents of this bulletin are copyrighted by the Graves Family Association
and Kenneth V. Graves, you are hereby granted permission, unless otherwise
specified, to re-distribute part or all to other parties for non-commercial
purposes only.
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.