GRAVES FAMILY BULLETIN
Vol. 15, No. 1, Jan. 21,
2013
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
**
Highest Ranked Genealogy Websites
**
Most Helpful Websites for Research in Britain
**
How to Help Transcribe Graves/Greaves Records
**
Oldest and Largest Greaves Family in England
**
New Research About How Long Native Australians Have Been Isolated, and
Implications for Genealogy
**
The Problem of Private Information on Family Tree DNA
**
To Submit Material to this Bulletin & Other Things
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GENERAL
COMMENTS
Welcome
to 2013! We can look forward to an
exciting year, with lots of new discoveries. I wish you all much happiness.
This
issue contains some suggestions for places on the Internet to look for
information, discussion of the largest Graves/Greaves family, a plea for help
in transcribing records, and hope that DNA test results will be even more
helpful in the future.
===============================================
HIGHEST RANKED
GENEALOGY WEBSITES
Every
year, Genealogy In Time magazine
ranks the
top 100 genealogy websites.
For those of you researching in countries other than the U.S., note that
this list is international. This
list for 2013 is dominated by websites run by the big three companies,
Ancestry, MyHeritage, and BrightSolid.
For those of you not familiar with BrightSolid, it is the online
publishing and technology arm of British publishing group DC Thomson. Their companies include Findmypast.com,
Friends Reunited, Genes Reunited, censusrecords.com, and Newspaper Archive.
It
is interesting to see that FTDNA is the highest ranked DNA website at number
17. You may also find the
genealogy search engines of interest, the last two free: Mocavo (25), Steve
Morse (56), and Access Genealogy (71).
The top 30 genealogy websites on the list are below.
Rank |
Website |
Category |
Country |
Free or Pay |
2012 Rank |
Address |
1 |
Ancestry.com |
records |
USA |
pay |
1 |
|
2 |
MyHeritage.com |
family tree |
USA |
pay |
2 |
|
3 |
Find A Grave |
cemetery |
USA |
free |
4 |
|
4 |
FamilySearch |
records |
USA |
free |
3 |
|
5 |
Geni.com |
family tree |
USA |
pay |
5 |
|
6 |
Ancestry.co.uk |
records |
UK |
pay |
8 |
|
7 |
Archives.com |
records |
USA |
pay |
6 |
|
8 |
GeneaNet |
forum |
France |
free |
9 |
|
9 |
Genealogy.com |
records |
USA |
pay |
7 |
|
10 |
MyFamily |
forum |
USA |
pay |
10 |
|
11 |
Genealogy Bank |
newspapers |
USA |
pay |
21 |
|
12 |
Arkivverket Digitalarkivet |
records |
Norway |
free |
26 |
|
13 |
Newspaper Archive |
newspapers |
USA |
pay |
12 |
|
14 |
FindMyPast UK |
records |
UK |
pay |
13 |
|
15 |
Ancient Faces |
forum |
USA |
free |
32 |
|
16 |
Ancestry.com.au |
records |
Australia |
pay |
18 |
|
17 |
Family Tree DNA |
DNA testing |
USA |
pay |
22 |
|
18 |
MyHeritage.no |
family tree |
Norway |
pay |
n/a |
|
19 |
Ancestry.ca |
records |
Canada |
pay |
14 |
|
20 |
Fold3 |
records |
USA |
pay |
17 |
|
21 |
GenealogyInTime Magazine |
magazine |
Canada |
free |
20 |
|
22 |
Eastman's Genealogy Newsletter |
blog |
USA |
free |
19 |
|
23 |
Genealogie.com |
family tree |
France |
pay |
n/a |
|
24 |
Genes Reunited |
records |
UK |
pay |
16 |
|
25 |
Mocavo |
search engine |
USA |
pay |
45 |
|
26 |
USGenweb Archives |
records |
USA |
free |
23 |
|
27 |
Deutschen Genealogieserver |
forum |
Germany |
free |
n/a |
|
28 |
Genealogy.About.com |
articles |
USA |
free |
n/a |
|
29 |
World Vital Records |
records |
USA |
pay |
28 |
|
30 |
EllisIsland.org |
records |
USA |
free |
24 |
===============================================
MOST HELPFUL
WEBSITES FOR RESEARCH IN BRITAIN
A
researcher in England recently made the comment that for families in the
British Isles, Ancestry.com is not very helpful. She has had much more success with MyHeritage, Genes
Reunited, and Findmypast. (As
mentioned in the previous article, these last two are part of BrightSolid.)
===============================================
HOW TO HELP
TRANSCRIBE GRAVES/GREAVES RECORDS
From
time to time, people ask me how they can help further the goals of the Graves
Family Association. One way is to
transcribe records, including census records, church records, and many other
groups of records.
I
am not sure the best way to set up a system to allow people to search records
and submit the results for all of us to use. I have been hoping to find tools
already created by others so I wouldn’t have to reinvent something that already
exists, but I have not yet had success.
Three ways that have been suggested are:
(1)
Use spreadsheets (Microsoft Excel) that have been created by others or that I
create for each type of record, and provide those to people who offer to
compile data. Then post the data
on the GFA website.
(2)
Use an online database (such as in Google documents) that can be shared by
multiple users.
(3)
Create custom spreadsheets that would be posted on the website of the Guild of
One Name Studies (GOONS).
For
all of these, an updatable index would have to be provided to allow users to
easily retrieve information.
Have
any of you had experience doing something like this, and can you suggest the
best way to make it happen?
===============================================
OLDEST AND
LARGEST GREAVES FAMILY IN ENGLAND
The
Greaves family of Beeley, Derbyshire, England (genealogy 228), is probably the
earliest for which there is a paper trail of documentation. One researcher has traced the family
back to Hugo Greaves (about 1200-1260), and another has traced it to Hugo’s
purported father, John Grevis (or Greaves) (born about 1175). All records of this period are in
Latin, and are legal documents, not parish registers, and spelling of the
surname varied. Genealogy 228
starts with John Greaves (b.c. 1490), who lived at Beeley Hill Top, Matlock,
Derbyshire, which we have visited twice on our trips to England.
HELP NEEDED TO EXPAND
GENEALOGY 228
For
a family of such antiquity and whose descendants are so numerous, it is
surprising that genealogy 228 is so small. Including the most recent generations (not on the GFA
website), there are only 460 descendants.
Why is genealogy 228 so small?
Is it because the family in England is small, and all the growth is in
the families that went overseas?
Is it because of a lack of interest by descendants in England in
gathering and sharing information?
Is it because of the lack of records and difficulties in researching
early English records? Or are
there other reasons? Let me know
your thoughts on this, and any suggestions you may have for expanding the
genealogy.
MANY OTHER FAMILIES
DESCENDED FROM GEN. 228
As
a result of our Y-DNA studies, we have identified the largest group of related
Graves/Greaves genealogies as descended from this family. That means there are more people
descended from this family than any other Graves/Greaves family. If you go to the Charts page (Numerical
Listing page) of the website and scroll down toward the bottom (or go directly there), you will
see a huge list of genealogies sharing a common ancestor with gen. 228. If you go to the summary chart
listed there, you will see much of the large network of related
genealogies. These include gen.
166 (John Graves of Concord, MA), gen. 28 (Greaves family of Stepney, London,
England, and Rear Adm. Thomas Graves of Charlestown, MA), gen. 247 (John
Greaves of St. Mary’s Co., MD), gen. 220 (Francis Graves of VA), and many
others.
Considering
the rates of illegitimacy, adoption, and name changes in each generation
(estimated by some at about 3% per generation), it is very likely that many of
the other Graves, Greaves (and other spellings) families may have been
descended from genealogy 228 also.
(Future genealogists may have a much more difficult time, however, since
there has been a dramatic rise in births outside marriage in the past half
century, with the rate rising to around 40% in the U.S. and other western
countries.)
WILL WE BE ABLE TO USE DNA
TO CONNECT THESE FAMILIES?
It
seems likely to me that eventually we will be able to find or confirm which
Graves and Greaves families are descended from genealogy 228 and other families
in this group. I don’t know how soon this will happen, but I would guess within
the next 3-4 years. Some of this
will probably require whole genome testing to find markers that are passed on
to descendants. Other techniques
may require more sophisticated mathematical analysis. A hint at some of the techniques that are beginning to be
used is in the next article.
===============================================
NEW RESEARCH
ABOUT HOW LONG NATIVE AUSTALIANS HAVE BEEN ISOLATED, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR
GENEALOGY
There
have been an increasing number of articles about studies of human origins and
migration. Many of these involve
DNA extraction from artifacts that could not have been tested until very
recently (such as the extraction and testing of Neanderthal DNA, showing that
living humans all have 1-6% Neanderthal DNA).
However,
some of the studies involve DNA testing of living humans, followed by
sophisticated mathematical computer analysis. An example of this is an article
in the Los Angeles Times on Jan. 14 about a study of the ancestry
of aboriginal Australians.
Although early DNA studies used Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA, this study
and many others uses autosomal DNA.
It
has been long believed that modern humans left Africa about 70,000 years ago,
reached Australia 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, and then didn’t mix with any
other humans until the 18th century arrival of Europeans. This new study confirmed that
aboriginal Australians, and early people of New Guinea and the Philippines
diverged about 36,000 years ago.
However, it also provided evidence that interbreeding with people from
India happened as recently as 4,200 years ago.
The authors of the new study also estimated how far back this genetic
mixing occurred, via the following reasoning: A child born of an Aborigine and
an Indian would carry in his or her genome an entire, unbroken stretch of each
chromosome, one from each parent. But with each generation, those two
chromosomes swap bits and pieces with each other. Down the generations,
therefore, the pure Indian or pure Australian chromosome stretches will become
increasingly shorter. Using the size and number of DNA stretches in people
alive today, the team ran computer simulations to calculate that 141
generations have passed since the initial interbreeding.
IMPLICATIONS
FOR GENEALOGY
It is very encouraging to read of the possibility
that autosomal DNA results can be used for such a long span of time. It seems that if the technique
described above can be used for such long periods of time, it might also work
even better for much shorter time periods. Mixing of parts of our chromosomes is not very thorough, and
there are sequences in our genome that are very small that don't recombine very
fast. The technique I have been
using is to find one or two segments of DNA that are fairly large. Identifying many smaller segments inherited
from a common ancestor is obviously a much more complicated approach.
===============================================
THE PROBLEM OF
PRIVATE INFORMATION ON FAMILY TREE DNA
Many
of us who have taken DNA tests at Family Tree DNA have noticed that some of our
Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA matches are marked “private”. This is most apt to be the case for
12-marker Y-DNA matches and HVR1 mtDNA matches. Our first reaction is apt to be: Why would someone take a
DNA test and then not want to find matches? What is going on here?
The
most complete answer to these questions is in a blog article
by Roberta Estes. The reason
listed by her and others is mainly that people don’t make the correct settings
in their “Account Settings.” On
the personal page of those who have tested with FTDNA is a drop-down menu for
My Account. If you select “Match
and E-mail Settings” from that, you will see that you can choose whether to be
notified of Y-DNA and mtDNA matches when they occur. However, it is very important to note that if you choose not
to be notified of matches, those matching you will not be able to see their
matches with you, and you will not even be able to see that you have any matches
at the level you have disabled.
Her
explanation ends with the comment: “The key, of course, to privacy and security
is to have as much privacy as you wish, without hurting your chances of making
genealogical connections and contacts, which is, after all, the entire reason
that you tested in the first place.”
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ABOUT
THIS BULLETIN:
This
bulletin is written and edited by Kenneth V. Graves, ken.graves@gravesfa.org.
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BULLETIN:
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