GRAVES FAMILY BULLETIN
Vol. 14, No. 10, Nov. 6,
2012
A
Free, Occasional, Online Summary of Items of Interest to Descendants of all
Families of Graves, Greaves, Grieves, Grave, and other spelling variations
Worldwide
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Copyright
© 2012 by the Graves Family Association and Kenneth V. Graves. All rights reserved.
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CONTENTS
**
General Comments
**
Action Needed by You to Further Our DNA Study
**
More About GEDMatch.com for Autosomal DNA Matching
**
What Is Ancestor-Projects.com?
**
Progress With Autosomal DNA Charts
**
Understanding Our Ancestry Mix
**
How to Learn More About DNA and DNA Testing
**
Viewing PDF Documents
**
To Submit Material to this Bulletin & Other Things
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GENERAL
COMMENTS
I
had hoped to send this issue of the bulletin by the end of October, but it
obviously didn’t happen. Most of
this issue is about various aspects of DNA testing, especially involving
autosomal DNA. Other aspects of
Graves/Greaves genealogy and the Graves Family Association activities will be
covered in the future.
I
will be attending the 8th Conference on Genetic Genealogy for Family
Tree DNA Project Administrators this coming weekend in Houston, Texas, and will
try to include the significant highlights of that in the next GF Bulletin.
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ACTION NEEDED
BY YOU TO FURTHER OUR DNA STUDY
Our
Graves/Greaves DNA Study is the key to much of our successful search for our
ancestry and the connecting of various parts of our families. The most important actions needed from
you are the following:
·
If you are descended from a genealogy that has not yet had any Y-DNA
tests run, we need for you to get an appropriate person to test. A person taking this test must be a
male who is a direct descendant through an all-male line from a male Graves or
Greaves ancestor.
·
If you have not yet taken an autosomal DNA test at 23andMe or Family
Tree DNA, you should try to do so.
·
If you have already taken an autosomal DNA test at Family Tree DNA and
are not already in the Graves DNA study, you should join that group at
FTDNA. To join, go to your
personal page on FTDNA, move your cursor to the Projects drop-down menu at the
top of the page and click on Join, and then click on Graves on the left side of
the page.
·
If you have taken an autosomal test anywhere (or when you take one in
the future), upload your raw data, your matches, and a GEDcom to GEDmatch.com,
as mentioned in the next article.
·
Encourage everyone you come across with Graves or Greaves in their
ancestry to share their ancestry with us and participate in the actions listed
above. The more people who are
involved, the more successful we will be.
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MORE ABOUT
GEDMATCH.COM FOR AUTOSOMAL DNA MATCHING
GEDmatch.com is a website started by Curtis
Rogers and John Olson. It is free,
but contributions are gratefully accepted (and needed). It offers a range of utilities that
make it easier to get the most out of your autosomal DNA testing. Some people feel that the greatest
usefulness of GedMatch is for comparing FTDNA results to 23andMe results.
The Legal Genealogist had an article
about GEDmatch in the issue of Aug. 12, 2012. Judy Russell points out that to use the many capabilities of
GEDmatch, you have to first download your raw autosomal DNA test results from
your testing company and then upload them to GEDmatch. You should also upload your match lists
from FTDNA and/or 23andMe, and a GEDcom, to GEDmatch to get full benefit from
the site. Presently Family Tree
DNA, 23andMe, and deCODEme make raw data available, but AncestryDNA does
not. (Ancestry has indicated that
it may make raw data available sometime in 2013.)
On
GEDmatch you can compare your autosomal and X-chromosome DNA test results with
all other users who have made their results public, no matter which testing
company they have used. The
results can be sorted by various criteria, including by the total amount of
shared DNA or the estimated generations back to a common ancestor. There are graphic displays that show
how your DNA compares to that of others, and how DNA of others matches each
other. There are also a number of
different options for displaying deep ancestry, showing the amount of your DNA
from each deep ancestral source.
A
phasing tool is also provided.
Phasing is a process to determine which of your DNA came from which of
your parents. There is the
potential to use phasing to identify which DNA came from individual
grandparents, great-grandparents, and beyond. In addition, this technique has the potential to partially
or completely reconstruct the genetic profile of any ancestor. The input requirement is having test
results from enough descendants.
See an
article in the June 7, 2012 issue of The
Genetic Genealogist for some additional information.
One
helpful utility is called “People who match one person, but not the other …and
people who match the same 2 people.”
It can be used to see others that you have in common with a match, and
it quickly produces a chart showing information as to how each of you compares
to each common match.
Another
very helpful tool provided by GEDmatch is triangulation. Both 23andMe and Family Tree DNA
provide a downloadable file that contains the names and results for all your
matches. By loading that
information into the GEDmatch database, you can get a list of all people in the
database who have the same matches as you, along with email addresses for the
people who submitted those files.
This will provide you with key information to help you “triangulate” on
your common ancestor.
Instructions
on how to download files from Family Tree DNA and 23andMe, and how to upload
them to GEDmatch are on the GEDmatch website.
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WHAT IS
ANCESTOR-PROJECTS.COM?
Ancestor-Projects.com is a sister site to
GEDmatch.com. It is a place where
people with common ancestry can share their information with each other. It also provides tools to provide in-depth
comparisons based on GEDCOM genealogy files and DNA test results.
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PROGRESS WITH
AUTOSOMAL DNA CHARTS
HOW AUTOSOMAL DNA TEST
RESULTS ARE BEING USED TO FIND AND VERIFY GRAVES/GREAVES ANCESTRY
There
are two main approaches that have been used recently to add to and improve the
autosomal DNA charts on the GFA website.
The first has been to look at the Graves/Greaves ancestry of everyone
who has taken an autosomal DNA test, add that lineage to the appropriate DNA
chart, and try to find a segment of DNA on which that person matches another
ancestor with a common Graves/Greaves ancestry. Then, an attempt is being made to get each of those matches
with Graves ancestry who are not already in the Graves DNA group to join, or at
least to share their match information, so that we can find all of their
Graves/Greaves matches.
The
second approach is to try to get all Graves/Greaves descendants who have taken
an autosomal DNA test with any company to upload their DNA results and gedcoms
to Gedmatch, as discussed in the preceding article. It is very important to gather as much data as possible so
that we can progress as quickly as possible. I have also tried to search on Gedmatch for everyone who
matches a Graves/Greaves family member on a DNA segment that is believed to be
common to all descendants of the family from which that person is
descended. This has not been
especially successful so far, and it is not known whether the problem is
because the matches found haven’t traced their ancestry back far enough or
whether the DNA segment isn’t really as definitive as believed. More people with known Graves/Greaves
ancestry on Gedmatch should help answer that question.
AUTOSOMAL DNA CHARTS ON GFA
WEBSITE
One
thing that is happening as more results are added to the charts is that some
families descended from a common ancestor are being combined. For instance, the charts for
genealogies 152, 220, and 28 have now been combined because a DNA segment
(chromosome 18, 6.0-8.5 million) has been found that seems to connect all
three. The charts for genealogy 65
and 168 have been combined because a common DNA segment (chromosome 4, 115-126
million) seems to connect them. A
group of genealogies for Surry Co. and Randolph Co., NC (gen. 11, 161, 262,
278, and 888) have been combined because they are believed to be closely
related, but many more DNA test results are needed to substantiate the
relationships. I am hoping that
not only will we be getting many more autosomal DNA test results in the near
future, but also that future advances will allow us to be more specific about
exactly how various family groups are connected.
The
Autosomal DNA page has had additions to the charts already there, and new
charts have been added. One of the
new charts is for genealogy 535 for James David Graves and Mary Ann Durham of
NC & TN. On the chart I have
written that James David Graves was probably descended from genealogy 13
(William Graves and Elizabeth ------ of VA, NC, TN, and KY), genealogy 169
(Capt. Thomas Graves of VA), or genealogy 220 (Francis Graves of VA).
One
or more male descendants of genealogy 535 needs to take a Y-DNA test to
determine which of these families James David Graves is descended from. In addition, getting more autosomal DNA
test results and comparing those results to the ones for the other genealogies
will provide additional information and support for any conclusions.
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UNDERSTANDING
OUR ANCESTRY MIX
There
is occasionally misunderstanding about the reported percentages of our ancient
ancestry. We may get a report of
Y-DNA or mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) being Asian or African or some other origin,
which may sometimes be unexpected.
Then, if we get a report that shows that our ancestry is 100% Northern
European, we may think that these reports are contradictory and that something
is seriously wrong.
One
of our members received seemingly contradictory reports of her deep ancestry
from her mtDNA and Family Finder tests.
Her mtDNA results were for African ancestry, but her Family Finder
results showed her as 100% Northern European. My response to her was that these
results are not at all inconsistent or conflicting. All the percentages
reported by any DNA testing are within certain ranges. Therefore 100% European
could mean 99-100%, 99.5-100.0%, etc. -- whatever their margin or error is. In
her case, she could be 99.99% European and 0.01% African. Her direct female
line could have had an African female in it 400 years ago or 2000 years ago,
and that could have been the only ancestral African for her within that entire
time period.
However, in her case I suggested that the most
likely scenario was that she had a female African ancestor in the 1600's or
early 1700's, which would put her 8 or 9 generations back. At 8 generations, her
average contribution to the genetic mixture would be 1/256 = 0.39%. At 9
generations, her contribution would be 1/512 = 0.2%. However, that far back, it
is very possible that Family Finder would not be able to detect any genetic
material inherited from her, so 100% European is the result I would expect from
Family Finder. FTDNA only says that FF will give matches back about 5 or 6
generations, although I have found matches back several generations farther
than that on occasion. But which segments of chromosomes are passed on to the
next generation is random, so sometimes segments are inherited more than
expected and sometimes much less.
A similar situation occurs when someone
believes they have Native American ancestry, but it doesn’t show up in the
results from an autosomal DNA test, or in a Y-DNA or mtDNA test. The explanation in this case is that
not enough autosomal DNA from a Native American ancestor has been passed on to
the person being tested. For
people searching for a specific ancestry such as Native American, there is
hope, however. Special DNA markers
are gradually being identified that may provide additional confirmation of
these ancestries.
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HOW TO LEARN
MORE ABOUT DNA AND DNA TESTING
Earlier
this year Grace Lee Smith Green asked on our Facebook page how to learn more
about DNA testing and test results, how it works, what the numbers mean,
etc. I have published a couple of
articles about this in previous issues of this bulletin. A response from Shannon Christmas
suggested that she visit 23andMe’s YouTube
channel for instructional videos.
In
an interesting coincidence, I just received my October-December issue of the NGS Magazine today from the National
Genealogical Society, and in it was an announcement of a new course by Dr.
Thomas H. Shawker. It is called
“Genetic Genealogy, The Basics.”
It is a six-lesson self-paced course, and is available on a PC- or
Mac-compatible CD in a PDF format.
For further information or to purchase the course, visit the NGS website
and click on the Educational Courses tab.
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VIEWING PDF
DOCUMENTS
Although
this may seem like a simple thing to many of you, nothing is simple or obvious
if you don’t know how. As soon as
you understand it and have experience with it, it is sometimes difficult to
understand why other people don’t know how to do it.
There
are many PDF documents on the Graves Family Association website. All of the charts with links on the
Charts page (the Numerical Index page) and all of the charts with links on the
Autosomal DNA page are PDF documents.
PDF stands for portable document format, and is the native file format
for Adobe Acrobat. It is a file
format that is independent of the original application software, hardware, and
operating system used to create those documents. A PDF file can contain any combination of text, graphics, and
images in a device-independent and resolution-independent format.
If
your computer is not able to read PDF documents, you can download a free Adobe Reader. It will automatically determine the
correct version for your computer.
To be able to edit or otherwise manipulate the contents of a PDF
document, you will need either Adobe Acrobat Pro or some other similar
software, but most people will have no need to edit a PDF document.
Once
you can open PDF documents on your computer, the next step is to be able to
move around in them and change the scale to enlarge or reduce the size of the
print and the charts. This depends
mainly on the default software that is used by you to do the viewing. If you are using Internet Explorer or
Firefox, there is a box at the top of the screen that shows the degree of
magnification and plus and minus buttons next to it to zoom in or out. There are also the usual controls on
the right side and the bottom of the frame to move within the image. If you are using Google Chrome or
Safari on the Mac, the magnification controls will be seen when you move the
cursor in the appropriate location at the bottom of the screen. With all these viewers, you can also go
to the View dropdown menu at the top of the screen and click on Zoom, or use
the keyboard shortcuts indicated in the View menu.
Another
thing you may not know about PDF documents (as well as any document you view in
a browser) is that you can search for any sequence of characters in the
document by using ctrl-F (or cmnd-F with a Mac), or by clicking on the
appropriate drop-down menu (usually Edit) at the top of the page to use Find.
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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
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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
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