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.
12, No. 2, May 20, 2010
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Copyright
© 2010 by the Graves Family Association and Kenneth V. Graves. All rights reserved.
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on how to start a free subscription to this bulletin and how to be removed from
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Visit
the GFA web site at https://gravesfa.org
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CONTENTS:
**
General Comments
**
National Genealogical Conference in Salt Lake City
**
Family Finder DNA Test from Family Tree DNA
**
More About Autosomal DNA Tests and the Future
**
Additional Comments on U.S. TV Shows About Tracing Your Roots
**
Genealogies on the GFA Website
**
To Submit Material to this Bulletin & Other Things
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GENERAL
COMMENTS
More
information about autosomal DNA testing is the highlight of this issue,
especially the new Family Finder test from Family Tree DNA. There will be more in the next issue
about this and why you should all consider ordering the test.
NATIONAL
GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY CONFERENCE IN SALT LAKE CITY
I
was in Salt Lake City recently for the National Genealogical Society annual
conference (April 28-May 1). It
was a great experience. Even
though I am a life member of the Society, it has been a few years since I have
attended one of these. I heard
that the attendance was an all-time record (2,600 registered attendees), and
all the sessions were crowded, as was the exhibit/vendor area.
Highlights
for me were: (1) the greatly expanded capabilities of the Family Search
website, (2) the discussions of collaborative research, sometimes in real time,
(3) mapping capabilities with Google Earth and other tools, (4) the increasing
capabilities of DNA testing, (5) some of the software that is new or that I was
unaware of before, and finally (6) a two-hour extravaganza at the Conference
Center with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Pulitzer Prize winning author David
McCullough, and more. The only
downside was that it was in the 40’s (32-51 degrees F) the whole time, mostly
cloudy, with showers and even some snow, so I wasn’t able to take the hot air
balloon ride I had planned.
The
Thursday evening celebration started with a great speech by Henry Eyring of the
LDS Church, several excellent family history videos, and the keynote speech by
historian David McCullough, who discussed the importance of history in our
lives. Tying it all together was
stirring music from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra, with a finale of
“Amazing Grace.” It was truly an
evening to remember!
There
will be more in future bulletins about some of the exciting developments that
promise to make our pursuit of genealogy easier and more interesting.
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FAMILY
FINDER DNA TEST FROM FAMILY TREE DNA
Family Tree DNA, the first and largest genealogical DNA testing company, today (May 3) announced the launch of the Family Finder DNA test for connecting family members across all ancestral lines. The test utilizes Affymetrix’ recently launched Axiom™ genotyping technology and the GeneTitan® System to confidently match a wide range of family relationships within five generations.
Family Finder represents a major advancement over earlier genealogical tests, which revealed only connections along specific paternal lines (for males) or maternal lines (males or females). Family Finder enables anyone, regardless of gender, to look for connections such as grandparents, aunts and uncles, half siblings, and first, second, third, and fourth cousins.
“This is the most exciting genetic genealogy breakthrough since 2000, when Family Tree DNA launched its Y-DNA test to uncover relatives in the direct paternal line,” said Bennett Greenspan, founder and CEO of Family Tree DNA.
The
price of the Family Finder test is now $289, up from the special pre-release
price of $249 announced in the previous GF Bulletin. It is still a good deal, and one I encourage all of you to
take advantage of if you can afford it.
For more information, see the announcement at http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Family-Tree-DNA-Launches-bw-1196302043.html?x=0&.v=1
or on the Family Tree DNA website at http://www.familytreedna.com/.
===============================================
MORE
ABOUT AUTOSOMAL DNA TESTS AND THE FUTURE
At
the present time, autosomal DNA testing for purposes of tracing ancestry is
available from 23andMe (with Relative Finder) and Family Tree DNA (with Family
Finder). Both these companies test
segments of your chromosomes and then compare the results to the testing
results of other people to find matches.
The segments tested, the criteria used to determine whether a matching
segment is significant, and the analytical tools provided are different for the
two companies. Therefore, the
results from testing at the two companies will not be exactly the same.
The
Family Finder test uses an Affymetrix microarray chip that includes over 500,000
pairs of locations called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in
your autosomal DNA. Relative Finder from 23andMe uses an Illumina chip.
One
observation of those who have already tested is that many people who are
predicted to be related within a reasonable time (within the last 500-1000
years) have not been able to find their common ancestor. The main reason for that is that most
of us don’t have every one of our lines traced for the past 500 years. Getting involved with this testing will
result in two things: (1) we will need to try to extend our ancestral lines so
that we can compare our pedigrees to others with whom we have DNA matches, and
(2) we will discover from DNA matching results that we are descended from a
particular ancestor (or couple) that we didn’t know we had (and it may
sometimes be difficult to then find what the line of descent is).
Related
individuals are identical by descent (IBD) at a genetic locus if they share the
same DNA material from a common ancestor.
Information about FTDNA’s Family Finder is in the Frequently Asked
Questions (FAQ) area at http://www.familytreedna.com/faq/answers/17.aspx#598.
The Family Finder test is designed to trace all of your ancestral lines (all 16
of your great-great grandparents) using your autosomal DNA in order to confidently
identify relationships for five generations. This is different from our mtDNA and Y–chromosome DNA tests, which are
intended to clearly trace exclusively the direct maternal or paternal lines.
Family
Finder detects your near and distant cousins by comparing your autosomal DNA with that of other Family
Tree DNA customers. If two people share identical segments of DNA then they may share a
recent ancestor. When the Family Finder program finds matching segments, it
uses statistical methods to determine if the segments are likely to be Identical By Descent (IBD). If they are
determined to be IBD then the Family Finder program calculates the relationship
based on the shared segments’ number and size.
The
Family Finder’s Relationship Range is a high confidence prediction of the possible
relationships between two people. Because it takes into account a combination
of factors, including the total number of shared DNA segments (blocks) as well as the total
number of centiMorgans, the result is a highly accurate range of relationships.
Depending on how well the DNA matches based on these factors, the range may be
large or small. The Relationship Range is just as accurate whether it shows a
small range of potential relationships or a large one.
The
Family Finder program declares a DNA segment to be Identical By Descent (IBD) if it
contains at least 500 matching SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) in
series. A DNA segment (block) that is 10 centiMorgans (cM) or larger indicates
conclusive shared ancestry while a block that is between 5 and 10 cM is highly
suggestive of shared ancestry. Additional factors such as the number
of shared blocks that are at least 1 cM and their size are also used for the
degree of relatedness calculations.
In
genetics, a centimorgan (abbreviated cM) is a unit of recombinant
frequency for measuring genetic linkage. It is often used to imply distance
along a chromosome -- a length of chromosome in which an average of 0.01
crossover occurs per generation.
All
of us need to keep in mind that things will change significantly once we go to
analyzing highly accurate complete genome sequences with very long read lengths.
Analysis of IBD segments is very helpful as an interim step, but it will
ultimately be replaced by true genotype information for each chromosome.
Even then, we still frequently won’t be able to find shared common
ancestors for relatively short segments (5-8 cMs) that we share with other
people (because the common ancestor is farther back than our knowledge takes
us).
===============================================
ADDITIONAL
COMMENTS ON U.S. TV SHOWS ABOUT TRACING YOUR ROOTS
It
was pointed out to me by Concetta Phillips that some of the episodes of the BBC
version of “Who Do You Think You Are?” can be viewed on YouTube. Just go to https://www.youtube.com/ and
search for “BBC Who Do You Think You Are.” Some of the most popular episodes on BBC have been for David
Tennant (Dr. Who), David Suchet, and Boris Johnson. However, it appears that most of the videos on YouTube are
abbreviated versions of the show, mostly only about 10 minutes instead of the
full hour.
Marissa
Goldenman also mentioned that the first episode of “Faces of America” can be
watched online at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/facesofamerica/.
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GENEALOGIES
ON THE GFA WEBSITE
In
a previous issue of this Bulletin (vol. 11, no. 8, Aug. 14, 2009), we discussed
the number and type of genealogies on the GFA website. In this article I want to point out the
information that has been compiled but is not on the website.
First
of all, only a small percentage of all the family information that has been
compiled is actually on the website.
The following table gives some examples to show that. For large genealogies with much
interest and much submitted information, only about 25% of the information is
on the website. For families with
low interest and little contributed information, sometimes as much as 95% of
the information is on the website.
Gen.
No. |
Name (with
birth date of earliest ancestor) |
No.
on web-site |
No.
in gene-alogy |
%
of numbers on website |
Pages
on web-site |
Pages
in gene-alogy |
%
of pages on web-site |
47 |
Thomas
Greaves of Bucking-hamshire (1535) |
399 |
564 |
71 |
28 |
47 |
60 |
106 |
John
Samuel Graves of SC (1780) |
110 |
288 |
38 |
7 |
26 |
27 |
165 |
William
Graves of Dover, NH (1632) |
672 |
876 |
77 |
49 |
76 |
64 |
166 |
John
Graves of Concord, MA (1605) |
5,861 |
15,984 |
37 |
523 |
1,464 |
36 |
169 |
Capt.
Thomas Graves of VA (1580) |
4,015 |
9,791 |
41 |
284 |
771 |
37 |
228 |
Greaves
Family of Beeley, Derbyshire (1490) |
434 |
466 |
93 |
40 |
52 |
77 |
270 |
John
Graves of VA (1665) |
6,332 |
29,491 |
21 |
465 |
2,437 |
19 |
The
main reason that so much information has been left off the website is because
we feel it is important to respect the feelings of some people not to put
information about living people online.
This
may also make you aware that there is not only much information on your part of
the Graves/Greaves family that you aren’t aware has been compiled, but there is
also much that needs to be compiled.
What we already have is only a small fraction of total family members
for all families.
You
can get access to all compiled information for your family or your part of the
family by agreeing to help gather more information and help compile it.
Some
of the lessons that are apparent from even this brief examination of a few of
the genealogies on the GFA website are: (1) what a small amount of information
we have about some of the genealogies, (2) many of the genealogies that must
have huge numbers of descendants (such as gen. 228, dating back to 1490) have
almost no information submitted and, as a result, have almost all of the
information available on the website (because little is know about recent
generations), (3) genealogies for families in England, in general, have the
least information.
Items
not in the genealogies that are on the website are the identities of the
contributors and (for some of the genealogies) the pictures. If you let me know about any
genealogies that don’t display the pictures, I can get them to display. Regarding the sources of information,
they have been omitted from the online genealogies for privacy reasons.
Descendants
can get additional information on contributors and material in the recent
generations by contacting Ken Graves.
===============================================
ABOUT THIS BULLETIN:
This
bulletin is written and edited by Kenneth V. Graves, ken.graves@gravesfa.org.
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