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
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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.Ó 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
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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
specified, to re-distribute part or all to other parties for non-commercial
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