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.
10, No. 6, May 31, 2008
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Copyright
© 2008 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 https://gravesfa.org
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CONTENTS:
**
General Comments
**
New Discoveries from Our DNA Study
**
Changes to the GFA Website
**
Haplogroups and Relationships Between Graves and Greaves Families
**
Using DNA to Find Ancestry and Connections
**
To Submit Material to this Bulletin & Other Things
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GENERAL
COMMENTS
This
issue of the bulletin contains some material that may be a little too technical
for some of you. But I am hoping that
many of you will find some of the DNA discussions helpful. Please let me know if you would like for me
to explain anything more clearly.
In
the next issue there will be more information about our trip to England next
June and some of the other future activities.
If
I haven’t made changes that you were hoping to see in the genealogies and on
the GFA website, it is because I never have nearly enough time to do everything
that I want or need to do. I will
welcome any of your suggestions on how to make more of those things happen, and
I always welcome your help. Also, don’t
hesitate to remind me of things you think are important. I always enjoy hearing from you, even if I
can’t always respond.
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NEW
DISCOVERIES FROM OUR DNA STUDY
The
most exciting new discovery is that genealogy 18 (Jonathan Greaves and
Elizabeth Dickson of NC & AL) is part of the Graves family of Caroline Co.
& Halifax Co., VA. (Another example
of the many cases where the Graves and Greaves spellings occur in the same
family.) You can see the other families
that are related by going to the GFA website, scrolling down to the DNA Study
section and clicking on the link to the Charts page, and then going to the
summary section for your family group. You can go directly to that at https://gravesfa.org/charts.html#Caroline.
If you look at the summary chart, it shows how I think the families may be
related. Based on the DNA results, I think Jonathan Greaves may have been a
brother of Snead Graves, and most closely related to the green blocks on the
right side of the chart.
Genealogy
18 shares a common ancestor with the descendants of Snead Graves (gen. 49, 84,
103, 169/188, and 906) because they all have mutation 6-14. If the summary chart is correct and Jonathan
Greaves was a brother of the father of William Graves (gen. 103) and Richard
Graves (gen. 169/188), then their father probably also had mutation 6-14 and
35-36.
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CHANGES
TO THE GFA WEBSITE
Some
changes have been made to the DNA page.
Perhaps the most interesting is that a new chart has been added to show
the relationships between the various Y-haplogroups and the tested Graves and
Greaves families. This chart can be
accessed from the DNA Study section of the main page and from the DNA
page. As we get more mitochondrial DNA
(mtDNA) test results, I will probably create a similar chart for those
haplogroups also.
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HAPLOGROUPS
AND RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN GRAVES AND GREAVES FAMILIES
Everyone
who has his or her DNA tested will see a haplogroup associated with the test
results. There are two sets of
haplogroups, one for Y-DNA and another for mtDNA. You can see more about this on a number of websites, including
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup)
and International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG) (http://www.isogg.org/tree/index.html). The simplified haplogroup chart that has
recently been added to the GFA website shows the relationships between the
various Graves and Greaves families whose DNA have been tested. The haplogroup of each person tested is
shown on the master DNA test results table at https://gravesfa.org/DNA_test_results.html. Since haplogroups are determined by SNPs
(single nucleotide polymorphisms) and new SNPs are constantly being discovered,
haplogroup names and relationships are constantly changing. This is the reason some of you may have
noticed that the exact name of your haplogroup on the Family Tree DNA website
and on the GFA website may be different from what it was before.
The
families that have been tested are shown on the chart on the GFA website at https://gravesfa.org/haplochart.pdf. Almost all the Y-DNA results in the study
are in either haplogroup I or R, with the overwhelming majority in R1b. It can be readily seen that those in
haplogroup I are not very closely related to those in haplogroup R. For those families that are haplogroup R1b,
as more SNPs are found to define more recent subgroups, and as more of us get
tested for those SNPs, a more complete chart of family relationships will be
developed.
Some
definitions of some of the terms used in this discussion are below.
Haplotype: A contraction of the
phrase “haploid genotype.” Commonly
used to refer to the set of Y-DNA (or mtDNA) test results for an individual or
closely related group of individuals.
This is usually a set of STR numbers for Y-DNA testing or a set of
alphanumeric results from an mtDNA test.
Haplogroup: A group of similar
haplotypes that share a common ancestor with a single nucleotide polymorphism
(SNP) mutation. These groups consist of
many haplotypes.
Nucleotide: A single unit of nucleic
acid, composed of a phosphate, a 5-carbon sugar, and a nitrogenous base. The base is one of the four chemical
building blocks of DNA, Adenine (A), Cytosine (C), Guanine (G), and Thymine
(T). In the classic depiction of the
DNA’s spiral ladder structure, the base is half of the “staircase step,” and
the sugars and phosphates for the “railing.”
Nucleotides join together to form DNA’s distinctive double helix shape.
STR
(short tandem repeat): A class of polymorphisms (mutations) that occurs when a pattern of
two or more nucleotides is repeated, and the repeated sequences are directly
adjacent to each other. By examining
enough STR loci (locations) and counting how many repeats of a specific STR
sequence there are at a given locus, it is possible to create a unique genetic
profile of an individual. For example,
a sequence GATA-GATA at a location would be reported as a value of 2 at that
location. This is also known as a
microsatellite.
SNP
(single nucleotide polymorphism): Pronounced “snip”, this is also called UEP (unique
event polymorphism), since any particular SNP is believed to happen only a
single time in history. This is a
change in which a single base in the DNA differs from the usual base at that
position. This occurs when a single
nucleotide (building block of DNA) is replaced with another. For example, the sequence CAGT might change
to CATT or TAGT.
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USING
DNA TO FIND ANCESTRY AND CONNECTIONS
The
use of DNA to find ancestry and connect Graves, Greaves, Grieve, etc. families
depends on finding the closest matches, and also finding markers that are
specific to families and lines from known ancestors.
To
get the most benefit from our DNA study, it would be desirable to find at least
one distinctive DNA marker for each line within most large families. The theory is that there is probably at
least one mutation that occurs in every generation, so if that mutation can be
identified, all descendants of that ancestor can also be identified. This is of interest for a couple of reasons:
(1) to verify the placement of lines in the genealogy, and (2) to find where
unknown lines that are found by DNA testing should be placed.
Using genealogy 270 (John Graves/Greaves of Northamptonshire, England) as an example, the earliest known ancestor was born about 1665. You can see the male lines of this family on chart270.pdf, accessible from the Charts page of the Graves Family Association website. No marker has yet been found that separates descendants of his sons John (b.c. 1685) and Thomas (b. 1691). However, descendants of Thomas (b. by 1724), son of John (b.c. 1685), all have a distinctive marker of 13 at position 6 (6-13), and all these lines are colored green on the chart. Although many other test samples in that genealogy have mutations (differences from the ancestral haplotype), none of them is yet known to define a line. The only exception to this is that the descendants of Andrew Joseph Graves (b. 1852) are all characterized by 18 at position 13 (13-18), and they are all colored salmon. Whether this goes back 1 or 2 more generations we won’t know unless we test another descendant of that generation. This could be because the mutation was recent, so is not shared by other descendants of that line, or it could be because only one descendant of the line has been tested, so it isn’t known when the mutation occurred.
Genealogy
270 shares a common ancestry with genealogy 47, and all tested descendants of
gen. 47 have a value of 39 at position 35 (35-39), rather than the 35-40 for
genealogy 270. No other distinctive
markers have been found, although 55-15 may be one, but only one sample of gen.
47 has been tested for 67 markers.
To
find distinctive markers for more lines, every line of interest should be
upgraded to 67 markers. Then, more than
67 markers need to be tested for selected samples, compared to find mutations,
and then at least one more descendant of each line needs to be tested for those
mutated markers to see whether they show up.
Another
example of an important family group that would benefit greatly from additional
DNA testing is the largest group in our study, that of the Greaves family of
Beeley, which includes Rear Adm. Thomas Graves of Charlestown, MA (gen. 28),
John Graves of Concord, MA (gen. 166), John Greaves of St. Mary’s Co., MD (gen.
247), Francis Graves of VA (gen. 220), and many others. If markers can be found that define specific
families, then it will be possible to say whether gen. 77 is really descended
from gen. 166, and which family gen. 150 and many others are descended
from. If we can gather enough genetic
information, it should eventually even be possible to determine which part of
which family any family segment is from.
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ABOUT THIS BULLETIN:
This
bulletin is written and edited by Kenneth V. Graves,
ken.graves@gravesfa.org. Ken Graves was
also editor of the Graves Family Newsletter (no longer published). This bulletin will contain announcements and
news of special interest to Graves descendants with Internet access. It will not contain queries, genealogies,
photos, and the kind of in-depth articles that used to appear in the Graves
Family Newsletter.
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.
Benefits include access to the “members only” section of the website,
membership directory, and help with learning more about your Graves/Greaves
family. The purpose of the GFA is to
bring together as many descendants as possible to work toward learning more
about the Graves/Greaves families, to help other descendants, and to instill
pride in our ancestry.
COPYRIGHTS:
Although
the contents of this bulletin are copyrighted by the Graves Family Association
and Kenneth V. Graves, you are hereby granted rights, unless otherwise
specified, to re-distribute articles to other parties for non-commercial
purposes only. Do not re-distribute the
newsletter in its entirety.
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