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. 8, July 15, 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
**
Graves Luncheon in Dallas, TX, July 19, 2008
**
Trip to England in June 2009
**
Should You Order DNA Testing Upgrades?
**
New Website and Newsletter of Ron Graves
**
To Submit Material to this Bulletin & Other Things
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GENERAL
COMMENTS
A
reminder of the luncheon meeting in Dallas, TX this coming Saturday, and
another reminder of the trip to England next June are the most important
things in this issue. I hope the other
articles are also of interest and help to some of you.
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GRAVES
GATHERING IN DALLAS, TX, JULY 19, 2008
The
Graves meeting and luncheon in Dallas, Texas on Saturday, July 19,
will be at 11:00 a.m. at the West End location of Sonny Bryans Smokehouse
BBQ. The address of the restaurant is
302 North Market St., Dallas, TX. It is
at the corner of North Market St. and Pacific Ave., very close to I-35E (North
Stemmons Freeway) and Texas 366 (Woodall Rodgers Freeway). Everyone who can be there is encouraged to
attend. There will be no set menu – you
will be able to order as much or as little as you want. Although this will be an informal affair,
Ken Graves will try to answer any questions and discuss any issues that may be
of interest to those in attendance.
Please
let me know that you will be there, if possible. (My cell phone number is 774-291-2192.) If you don’t let me know, you are welcome to show up anyway.
===============================================
TRIP
TO ENGLAND IN JUNE 2009
The
trip to England will be the first half of June 2009, and will be 12-14 days,
starting from and ending in London..
More details (including an itinerary, etc.) will be in the next bulletin
(after I get home from Texas, Arkansas and Missouri). The cost will be about $3,500 per person (including air fare to
and from England and the U.S. east coast).
More information about the trip in 1995 can be seen on the GFA website
under Activities/Recent Events.
If
there is a possibility that you may want to go, please let me know as soon as
you can. The following paragraphs
describe the trip. Although many people
have already told us of their interest, we would like to have a higher
response. In general, the more people
who go, the less expensive it will be.
Any comments and suggestions will be welcomed.
We
will be visiting places of scenic and historical interest, as well as places of
significance to your ancestors. This
will not be a research trip, and we do not plan to schedule time in archives
and libraries, although you always have the option to go off on your own for a
day. In the 2009 tour, we will be
visiting a few of the same places as in 1995, but in no way will this be a
repeat of that trip. The present plans
are for the tour to include Keswick and the beautiful Lake District, the
Hertford/Nazeing area, York, Lincolnshire, and London. We are also considering visiting other
places including King’s Norton and Moseley Hall (now part of Birmingham),
Mickleton, Beeley, and Buckingham.
Meetings with members of the various Graves and Greaves families will be
an important part of the tour. See also
the discussion on the website under Activities/Future Events.
One
of the big advantages of this trip will be that many of us now know where in
England our ancestors were from, and some of the various Graves and Greaves
families that are related. You will
probably get to meet distant relatives you never knew existed.
If
you live in the U.K. or Ireland and would like to join us, that would be
great! If you live there and might like
to help organize a meeting with local Graves/Greaves/Grieve family members as
part of our tour, please let me know.
No matter where you live, if you have any strong feelings about places
we should visit, let me know that also.
A
link to a response form to let us know of your interest is in the first
paragraph in the “What’s New” section of the main page of the GFA website. There is also a link at the end of the
sidebar section for “Next Events”. If
you have any problem with the form, just send me an email with your name,
address, likely number in your group, and whether you might be interested in an
optional add-on tour of Ireland and/or Scotland.
===============================================
SHOULD
YOU ORDER DNA TESTING UPGRADES?
There
are several types of upgrades.
Upgrading a Y-DNA test to more markers is usually very helpful, as
discussed in previous issues of this bulletin.
Recently, however, FTDNA has been offering more of what they call a Deep
Haplogroup (or Deep Clade) Test.
Questions include: What is this? How can it help you? Should you order
it?
In
general, it may be helpful to our DNA study for at least a couple of people in
each group to get these Deep Haplogroup tests.
The reason is that this is another way to learn more characteristics of
each person’s DNA so that we can better put people with the same test results
in the same group and separate those who belong in other groups. The SNPs used for this test are measures of
longer-term ancestry, but they may eventually be able to show nearer-term
ancestry also. In addition to being of
help to our DNA study, these test results may be of interest to each of you to
indicate where your ancestors lived over thousands of years. The discussion below is mostly from the
Family Tree DNA website.
Family Tree DNA now offers its Y-DNA customers Deep Clade tests to determine
what branch of their haplogroup they belong to. These Deep Clade tests have
been updated with new SNPs and haplogroup branches in the 2008 Y-Chromosome
Phylogenetic Tree.
Family Tree DNA provides the most comprehensive Deep Clade testing panels available on the market. These tests are available for haplogroups E1b1b, G, I, J, and R. The tests begin with your predicted haplogroup, and then tests whatever SNPs are necessary in order to determine your placement on the haplogroup tree. All SNPs tested will be reported to the customer as they are completed.
The purpose of the Deep Clade test is to confirm your haplogroup assignment and determine where your lineage fits within that haplogroup’s tree. Some haplogroup branches are found within more specific populations and geographic locations. As research progresses, more geographical specificity associated with SNPs will emerge. For more information about haplogroups, look at FTDNA’s Haplogroup FAQ.
Scroll down to view the haplogroup trees covered by Deep Clade testing. Prices vary depending on the Deep Clade test. To order a Deep Clade test, log in to your account and proceed to the Haplogroup section. If there is a Deep Clade test available for your haplogroup, the test will automatically be offered to you. If you have already tested your Deep Clade and new SNPs are available which may be informative for you, the applicable upgrade will be offered to you in the Haplogroup section.
Some
Definitions from the FTDNA Website
What is a haplogroup?
One way to think about haplogroups is as major branches on the family tree of Homo
Sapiens. These haplogroup branches characterize the early migrations of
population groups. As a result, haplogroups are usually associated with a
geographic region. If haplogroups are the branches of the tree then the
haplotypes represent the leaves of the tree. All of the haplotypes that belong
to a particular haplogroup are leaves on the same branch. Both mtDNA and Y-DNA
tests provide haplogroup information, but remember that the haplogroups
nomenclature are different for each.
Y-DNA haplogroups
A Y-DNA haplogroup is defined as all of the male descendants of the single
person who first showed a particular SNP mutation. A SNP mutation identifies a
group who share a common ancestor far back in time, since SNPs rarely mutate.
Each member of a particular haplogroup has the same SNP mutation. For a single
page graphic representation of the Y chromosome haplogroup tree, please see the
haplotree.
mtDNA haplogroups
An mtDNA haplogroup is defined as all of the female descendants of the single
person who first showed a particular polymorphism, or SNP mutation. Like Y-DNA
SNP mutations, an mtDNA SNP mutation identifies a group who share a common
ancestor far back in time.
How is my haplogroup determined?
Your haplogroup is automatically tested and confirmed for mtDNA tests. For
Y-DNA tests, your haplogroup is predicted based on a large database that Family
Tree DNA has for this purpose. The Y-DNA haplogroup database consists of the
test results of participants in studies conducted and tested by Dr. Hammer at
the University of Arizona.
Due to our high level of confidence in our prediction algorithm, most of the
times a person will not be offered to order a confirmation test of their
Haplogroup. However, on some occasions where we don’t feel that a Haplogroup
can be determined unambiguously without a test, the SNP test will be offered.
For several haplogroups we can now offer Deep Clade tests, which can provide
further information.
===============================================
NEW
WEBSITE AND NEWSLETTER OF RON GRAVES
Ron
Graves of San Antonio, Texas has just announced that he has a new website at www.optimisticday.com. He is a professional motivational speaker,
has a motivational newsletter, a blog, an internet talk show, and has published
four motivational books. One of his
goals is to increase the number of people receiving his monthly
newsletter. If you are interested, just
go to his website and signup for the free newsletter.
Ron
is descended from genealogies 13 and 270, and is the main organizer of the
Southwest Chapter of the Graves Family Association.
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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.
TO
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