GRAVES
FAMILY BULLETIN
Vol. 14, No. 4, April 29, 2012
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 © 2012 by the
Graves Family Association and Kenneth V. Graves. All rights reserved.
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Click on these links to visit
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CONTENTS
** General Comments
** Changes to the GFA Website
and this Bulletin
** GFA Facebook Page
** Your Help is Needed to
Solve Genealogical Puzzles
** An Example of Creating a
Lot of Family From Very Little
** How to Learn About All
Ancestral Lines With Autosomal DNA Testing
** Finding Specific Tribal
Ancestry for African Americans
** Be Careful When Doing
Genealogy Research
** Surname Changes: When, Why
and How Do They Happen?
** To Submit Material to this
Bulletin & Other Things
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GENERAL COMMENTS
This issue of the Bulletin is
the first sent using a new mailing service. Let me know if you encounter any problems.
There is also discussion of
the changes being made to the GFA website. And, finally, a couple of articles discuss some of the
research on Graves/Greaves families, and why your help is essential to the
success of what we want to accomplish.
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CHANGES TO THE GFA WEBSITE AND THIS
BULLETIN
CHANGES TO THE WEBSITE
The website is undergoing some changes. Please let us know if you
find any problems, if you especially like some of the new features as they
appear, or if you have ideas for improvements. Some of the changes already made
are that the menu bar at the top of every page now displays the page options as
you move your mouse cursor over the tabs, and the website search box has been
moved to the left top of every page to try to make it more obvious. Coming soon
will be a new capability to search all the genealogies more easily and
completely. To allow for some of the new capabilities, all website pages had to
have their html extensions replaced by php extensions. This caused any
bookmarks that anyone had for any page other than the main page to no longer
work. Bookmarks for the genealogies will still work, but you will need to
re-bookmark any other pages. Also, if you signed up for Change
Detection notification (on the main page, and on the news and charts
pages), you will have to sign up again.
CHANGES TO THIS BULLETIN
As a result of changes that
have already been made to the website and others that are planned, several
changes have had to be made to this Bulletin.
· Rather than send it by direct email as has been done
for many years, we are now using a mailing service.
· We have also stopped putting website addresses (URLs)
for websites in the bulletin, since those are recognized by some ISPs (Internet
Service Providers) as indicating spam, and are replacing those with links for
you to click on.
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GFA FACEBOOK PAGE
Our Facebook page continues
to increase in membership. We are
now up to 339 members. It is a
good way to contact other Graves, Greaves, Grieves, etc., family members, to
ask questions, and to share information.
Even if you have never used Facebook or other online social media sites
before, click here to go
to the page and ask to join. You
can always quit if you don’t find it helpful.
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YOUR HELP IS NEEDED TO SOLVE
GENEALOGICAL PUZZLES
I have recently been spending
much time adding a few new genealogies and updating some older genealogies on
the GFA website. Among the older
genealogies that have been updated are genealogy 94 (William Graves and Sarah
Fisher of Culpeper Co., VA, and KY) and genealogy 49 (Ira Graves and Sallie
------ of VA).
Both of these are part of
much larger genealogies. We know
many of the pieces, but we don’t presently know (or, at least, can’t prove)
exactly how the pieces connect. As
a result of DNA testing, we have been able to prove that genealogies descend
from a common Graves or Greaves ancestor.
I have put charts on the Charts page of the website to show how I think
the various genealogies in each related group may connect with each other. The family of Ira Graves (genealogy 49)
is part of the larger family of Caroline Co., and Halifax Co., VA, and the
chart for them can be accessed from the Charts page of here. The family of William Graves of VA
& KY (genealogy 94) is part of a much larger family, the Greaves family of
Beeley, Derbyshire, England (genealogy 228). Genealogy 94 is one of the genealogies on the right side
(colored yellow) of the summary chart,
and I believe it is probably descended from genealogy 220 (Francis Graves of
VA).
What is now very much needed
is for you and others to take some part of this and do the necessary research
to prove the connections. I am
just one person and there is no way that I am ever going to be able to do more
than a fraction of the needed investigation.
Now that we have DNA testing,
that is a tool that will eventually be able to confirm much of what we find
through traditional research. We
started with Y-DNA testing, added mtDNA testing, and now have autosomal testing
(Family Finder and Relative Finder).
Soon we will have whole genome testing with SNPs that are specific to
individual ancestral lines. But we
will still need traditional research and all of us working together to solve
the many puzzles that remain.
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AN EXAMPLE OF CREATING A LOT OF FAMILY
FROM VERY LITTLE
Recently Wendy Wilcox posted
a message on our Facebook page asking for help in finding more of her Graves
ancestry. She said that her
grandmother was Florence Lillian Millen, nee Graves, that she arrived in Canada
before 1913, and that she was from Woodgreen, London, England. She also said that Florence was born
about 1886, married Arthur Millen, born about 1878, and he was in the Boer War. That might have been enough to locate
Florence in Canada and in England, but it wasn’t that easy. There were multiple people named
Florence in England, but none seemed to fit, and she couldn’t be found in
Canadian census records at all.
I then went to the Family
Search website and found birth records for 2 of the children of Arthur and
Florence, which listed Arthur’s name as Arthur Percival Millen. Arthur Gordon Millen was born 14 Jan.
1910 and died 20 Aug. 1910, both in Toronto, and Henry Edward Roy Millen was
born 29 Dec. 2010 in Toronto. I
then found the marriage record of Arthur and Florence in St. Michael’s Church,
Wood Green, Middlesex, England, on 16 April 1906, which gave the name of his
father as Edward Millen, pianoforte maker, and her father as Harry Graves,
foreman, porter G.E.R. With that
information, I was able to positively identify the family in the censuses for
London and Middlesex, England, and then back to Sawbridgeworth,
Hertfordshire. With the help of
submitted information, most of which I was able to verify, we now have Wendy’s
Graves ancestry traced back to James Graves (born about 1755) and Ann Ellis in
Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire.
Because of where this family
lived, it seems very possible that they are related to the Hertfordshire family
of Thomas Graves of Hartford, CT (genealogy 168) and Deacon George Graves of
Hartford, CT (genealogy 65). Now
all we have to do is find at least one living male descendant with the Graves
surname to take a Y-DNA test to confirm that relationship.
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HOW TO LEARN ABOUT ALL ANCESTRAL LINES
WITH AUTOSOMAL DNA TESTING
In general, the only way to
do this is to test the DNA that is inherited from all ancestral lines. This DNA is called autosomal DNA. The test from Family Tree DNA is called
Family Finder, and the test from 23andMe is called Relative Finder. The larger the database for comparison
and the more of the DNA that is tested, the better will be the results. Ideally, if we could afford it, the
entire genome would be tested. The
day seems to be rapidly approaching when whole genome testing will be
inexpensive enough that many people will have it done. At that time, I expect that we will be
able to reliably trace our ancestors back much farther than the present limit
of 5 or 6 generations.
To sign up for the autosomal
DNA test (Family Finder) or any of the other DNA tests from Family Tree DNA, go
to the GFA website, click on the link in “Order DNA tests from FTDNA” in the
sidebar on the right side of the page, and follow the instructions.
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FINDING SPECIFIC TRIBAL ANCESTRY FOR
AFRICAN AMERICANS
I have been asked about
finding the specific ancestral tribe of origin of African American Graves family
members. Y-DNA tests and
mitochondrial DNA tests can, of course, be used to find the ancestry of the
direct all-male or all-female lines.
The results of those tests can then be matched with those in Africa of
known tribal origin.
However, these all-male and
all-female lines are only 2 of the many ancestral lines we all have. To trace all our various ancestral
lines, autosomal DNA testing is needed, and that is not yet at the point where
it can be used to identify tribal origin (or other ethnic origin) of
anyone. There is a possibility
that as we progress to testing of the entire genome, markers may be found that
will connect us with our ancient origins through many of our ancestral lines.
One company, African Ancestry, founded by Dr. Rick
Kittles and Ms. Gina Paige in 2003, claims to be able to pinpoint African
tribal origin. However, they are
able to do this only for the direct male and female lines, as mentioned in the
preceding paragraph.
A very interesting and
scholarly discussion
of this subject was posted Oct. 1, 2011, on The Root blog.
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BE CAREFUL WHEN DOING GENEALOGY RESEARCH
We all probably know that we
should be very careful about believing everything we find in submitted
genealogies on Ancestry.com or elsewhere.
However, in our own research I just came across a situation where I was
misled at first.
I was trying to add
information to the genealogy of Orrin Noble Graves and Honor Hard of VT and NY
(genealogy 124). They had a son
named Henry Graves, born 24 Aug. 1830 in NY or VT, who married Emeline (or
Emaline) Marsh. Some of his
siblings stayed in St. Lawrence Co., NY, but others went to Wisconsin and Iowa,
and one brother was in Kendall Co., IL.
I found what seemed to be Henry and Emeline in the 1870 census for Lee
Co., IL, and the 1880 and 1900 censuses for DeKalb Co., IL. However, when I saw that the Henry
Graves born in NY had parents who were also born in NY, I suspected something
was wrong, since I knew that the Henry Graves I was looking for had both
parents born in VT. I then found a
Henry Graves, also married to an Emeline, who was living in St. Lawrence Co.,
NY, whose parents were both born in VT.
(Of course, sometimes the information in census records is not correct,
and is not consistent from census to census. For instance, the correct Henry Graves was listed in the
1900 census as born in NY, whereas all other censuses had him born in VT.) This turned out to be a fairly simple
search, but it is an example of how easy it is to make an error if we jump to a
conclusion too quickly.
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SURNAME CHANGES: WHEN, WHY AND HOW DO
THEY HAPPEN?
Although this article is
about name changes of immigrants to America, it probably applies to most other
countries also.
The Weekly Genealogist (TWG), the online newsletter of the New England Historic
Genealogical Society (NEHGS), was discussed in the last issue of this
bulletin. Two recent issues of TWG
contain interesting articles about surname changes and how they occur. These articles were in the issues for
March 14 and March 21. Since the
addresses to go to them directly are only valid for 30 days, to view the
articles you will have to go to the American
Ancestors website and click on
the March 2012 Archives link.
The experiences of people
mentioned in the articles are that it was generally the people themselves or
their associates who changed the spelling or form of their name, and not some
official at Ellis Island or other port of entry in America who made the
change. For those of you who find
this and other articles in TWG interesting, note that further discussion is
available on the NEHGS Facebook page
and the NEHGS
Discussion Boards. The March
21 article also cites recent postings on this subject on two genealogy blogs.
You can find much more
discussion on name changes by searching for “immigrant name changes.” Good articles are at Genealogy.com and RootsWeb, and
one of several articles that states that name changes are less common today
than in earlier times is at Legal
Language Services.
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ABOUT THIS BULLETIN:
This bulletin is written and
edited by Kenneth V. Graves, ken.graves@gravesfa.org.
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Send any material you would
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20 Binney Circle, Wrentham, MA 02093 (more details on GFA website). Payment may also be sent electronically
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bulletin are copyrighted by the Graves Family Association and Kenneth V.
Graves, you are hereby granted permission, unless otherwise specified, to
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