GRAVES FAMILY BULLETIN

 

Vol. 18, No. 3, April 25, 2016

 

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 © 2016 by the Graves Family Association and Kenneth V. Graves.  All rights reserved.

 

Information on 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.  If you received it from a friend and want to subscribe, send an email message with your full name to ken.graves@gravesfa.org.

 

Click on these links to visit the GFA website and our Facebook page.

 

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CONTENTS

 

** General Comments

** Special Sales for DNA Tests

** A Personal Matter: Bicycle Ride to Raise Money for AlzheimerÕs Research & Care

** Online Information and the Wayback Machine

** Three Interesting Articles

** Who Do You Think You Are? Live

** Another Interesting and Helpful Article About Y-DNA Matching

** To Submit Material to this Bulletin & Other Things

 

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GENERAL COMMENTS

 

This issue of the GF Bulletin contains a variety of subject and articles.  The most important for many of you is the DNA sale from Family Tree DNA.

 

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SPECIAL SALES FOR DNA TESTS

 

National DNA Day is Monday, April 25th, and commemorates the day in 1953 when a paper detailing the structure of DNA was published in Nature magazine. It also recognizes the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003. 

 

Both Ancestry and Family Tree DNA are having sales on their DNA products, starting last Thursday evening and ending on Tuesday, April 26 at 12 midnight Eastern time for Ancestry and 12 midnight Central time for FTDNA.

 

ANCESTRYÕS OFFER

Ancestry only offers one DNA test product, AncestryDNA, which is their autosomal DNA test.  Their product, usually $99 plus shipping, is $79 plus shipping during this sale.

 

FTDNAÕS OFFER

Family Tree DNA offers a full range of DNA tests, including Family Finder, which is an autosomal DNA test similar to AncestryÕs product.  The prices are below, and are valid on new tests and add-ons only. Discounts do not combine with existing group discounts. Upgrades will be discounted in June.

 

This is an especially good opportunity to purchase the BigY test and recommended SNP packs for male Y-DNA testing.  For almost all Graves and Greaves genealogies, these products provide the potential to extend ancient male ancestry down into the genealogical time frame (within the last 300-400 years), as shown on the haplogroup charts (links at the bottom of the Y-DNA page on the GFA website).

 

Product

Retail Pricing

   Sale Price

Family Finder

       $99

     $79

mtFull Seq

      $199

    $149

Y37

      $169

    $129

Y67

      $268

    $199

Y111

      $359

    $289

BigY

      $575

    $460

SNP Packs

      $119

    $109

 

 

 

mtDNA plus

 

Not on Sale

 

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A PERSONAL MATTER: BICYCLE RIDE TO RAISE MONEY FOR ALZHEIMERÕS RESEARCH & CARE

 

I have never included an article like this in any of the newsletters and bulletins I have been publishing since the 1970s.  I hope you donÕt mind this one.  It is one of the few things I can do to try to help find an effective treatment and cure for this terrible disease.  This has affected both a close family member and several good friends in the last few years.

 

My older daughter and I will be participating in a charity bicycle ride on Saturday, June 11, the ÒRide to End AlzheimerÕs 2016.Ó  We will be doing the Metric Century option, which is 62 miles (100 kilometers), starting and ending in Rye, NH.  We did this ride last year also, but on a hillier course.

 

AlzheimerÕs disease is a degenerative and fatal disease of the brain for which there is currently no cure.  But there is hope and promise for the future.  The AlzheimerÕs Association is working hard to promote and fund research efforts to find a cure.  90% of funds raised through the Ride support the AlzheimerÕs AssociationÕs research grants program, while 10% provide care and support for families affected by AlzheimerÕs in MA and NH.  You can learn more about the difference between dementia and AlzheimerÕs (which is the most common form of dementia) by going to the website here.

 

I have pledged to raise at least $1,000 through this ride, but would like to raise more than that.  If you would like to donate in any amount, you can contribute online by clicking here, or you can send me a check made out to AlzheimerÕs Association, MA/NH Chapter, or you can print a form from the website and mail a donation (noting that it is for my ride) to AlzheimerÕs Association, MA/NH Chapter, Attn: Ride to End AlzheimerÕs, 480 Pleasant St., Watertown, MA 02472.  Thank you for your support - emotional and financial.

 

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ONLINE INFORMATION AND THE WAYBACK MACHINE

 

GENERAL BACKGROUND

The world has changed greatly in many ways.  One of the changes is in how we record and store information.  It used to be that genealogists relied on information stored on paper, including documents stored in courthouses, libraries and archives.  Family histories were written on paper that was handed down to children and other family members, and were sometimes compiled and published as books.

 

Now there is still some of that, but mostly we all depend on computers and the Internet.  Instead of writing letters and sending them through the postal system, we use email, texting, or social media such as Facebook and Twitter.  This new technology has the advantages of being able to reach many more people much more quickly, sometimes with more information.  However, its disadvantages include knowing less about the people doing the communicating and, most importantly, creating records that are much less apt to be accessible and to survive.

 

For genealogical research now we rely increasing on online websites.  This is especially helpful, as more and more records are being digitized and made available online.  As individuals, we are storing more and more of our records and research results on our computer hard drives and on electronic media such as CDs, flash drives, and maybe even on those diskettes that everyone used to use.  The problem is that technology changes (advances?) and the material on our personal devices is no longer available, and the websites we used and referenced as the sources of much of our information change and sometimes disappear.  What can be done about that?  The solution for our personal records could be the subject of another article, and will not be dealt with here.  However, an attempt to solve the problem of website information no longer being available in the future is called the Wayback Machine, which is a name for the Internet Archive.

 

THE WAYBACK MACHINE AND THE INTERNET ARCHIVE

The Internet Archive is a non-profit organization that was founded to build an Internet library.  Its purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format.  It was founded in 1996 and is located in San Francisco.  The Internet Archive is working to prevent the Internet and other Òborn-digitalÓ materials from disappearing into the past.  Collaborating with other institutions, they are working to preserve a record for generations to come.  You can see more about this by clicking here.

 

THE PROBLEM THAT IS THE REASON FOR THIS ARTICLE

Many of the genealogies on the Graves Family Association have references to websites, pages and articles on websites, or other online information.  One example of this is in genealogy 270, in the section about the Thomas Graves born in 1691 who married Ann Davenport.  For evidence that Ann Davenport was indeed the wife of Thomas Graves, a website for the Pamunkey Davenports (about the Davenport family of Pamunkey Neck in colonial Virginia) was cited.  Earlier this year, it was called to my attention that the referenced website no longer exists.  Fortunately, I remembered the Wayback Machine, and I changed the reference in genealogy 270 to point to the archived site.  The website as it existed in 2012 can be seen here.

 

If you click on the link to see the 2012 version of the website, you will see a time scale at the top of the page.  You can advance to more recent versions of the website (the most recent is Sept. 16, 2015), or go back to older versions (the oldest is Oct. 31, 2005).

 

HOW TO SEARCH FOR ANY WEB PAGE

Go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine by clicking here.  Then enter the website you want to find at any time in the past, whether it still exists or not, in the search block at the top of the page.  When I do that for the Graves Family Association website, I get a page showing that the site was saved 180 times between Dec. 5, 1998 and April 3, 2016.  I can then first click on a date in the year of interest in the date-line at the top of the page, and then click the blue circle in the calendar date of interest to see the actual website on that historical date.

 

OTHER INTERESTING THINGS ON THE WAYBACK MACHINE

There are many other interesting things on the Wayback Machine.  These include collections of live music, library collections, audiobooks, feature films, television archive, non-English language videos of the Iraq War, a Grateful Dead collection, and much, much more.

 

Their Old Time Radio archives include: Dragnet, Lux Radio Theater, Fibber McGee and Molly, Jack Benny, Amos and Andy, Lum and Abner, Hopalong Cassidy, The Green Hornet, World War II News, Boston Blackie, Ozzie and Harriet, The Life of Riley, Perry Mason, and many, many more.

 

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THREE INTERESTING ARTICLES

 

All three of these articles were called to my attention by the April 13 issue of The Weekly Genealogist, a New England Historic Genealogical Society publication.

 

Archbishop of Canterbury Learns Identity of Biological Father

ÒThe Most Reverend Justin Welby, 60, has discovered he is the son of Sir Winston Churchill's last private secretary, the late Sir Anthony Montague Browne.  He had believed his father was whisky salesman Gavin Welby, who died in 1977.Ó  This is in no way a derogatory article about Archbishop Welby, but rather an interesting story about how any of us can find unsuspected and surprising things in our recent or distant ancestry.

 

Testing DNA When Time is Running Out

Posted on April 8, this article says: ÒYou can get a DNA test for a parent who is incapacitated or recently deceased, but should you?Ó  The article includes some discussion of the ethics and legality of getting DNA samples from elderly, sometimes incapacitated, people, and the best way to do that.

 

When Is It Okay to Dig Up the Dead?

According to this article, ÒHuman bones tell stories that would otherwise be lost to history. But archaeologists are increasingly confronted with demands to let past generations rest in peace.Ó  Many different aspects of the issues involved are discussed in this article.

 

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WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? LIVE

 

Who Do You Think You Are (US)? is an American genealogy documentary series that is an adaptation of the British BBC series of the same name.  The U.S. version started out on NBC, but is now on TLC for its eighth season.

 

Who Do You Think You Are? Live bills itself as the worldÕs largest family history show.  First held in London, it was in Birmingham, England this year, April 7-9, for its 10th year anniversary.

 

Debbie Kennett, a member of ISOGG recently posted that the DNA lectures from this show will be uploaded to the YouTube channel over the next couple of weeks, and all the videos can be seen here. (If the page seems a little slow in displaying after you click the link, be patient.) A blog post by Debbie with further information about the show, with lots of photos, can be found here.

 

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ANOTHER INTERESTING AND HELPFUL ARTICLE ABOUT Y-DNA MATCHING

 

As part of her DNAeXplained - Genetic Genealogy blog, Roberta Estes published an article on April 14 called ÒConcepts - Y DNA Matching and Connecting With Your Paternal Ancestor  This was written to answer the question of how and why we can use Y-DNA to identify or connect with a patrilineal ancestor.

 

Her article explains that males inherit the Y chromosome from their father, who received it from his father, and back through the all-male line of ancestry.  Mutations sometimes happen during any transmission event.  The two kinds of markers that are most used for genetic genealogy are STRs (short tandem repeats) and SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms).  STRs are the markers that are reported in the standard Y-DNA tests from Family Tree DNA (for example, a value of 12 might be reported for marker 25).  With enough descendants tested, the marker values for a deceased ancestor can be determined.

 

Roberta discusses all these subjects in much more detail, and goes on to discuss genetic distance, the frequency of mutations, and other helpful subjects.

 

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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 on GFA website).  Payment may also be sent electronically to gfa@gravesfa.org via PayPal.

 

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.