GRAVES FAMILY BULLETIN
Vol. 15, No. 8, Aug. 3, 2013
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
© 2013 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
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and our Facebook page.
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CONTENTS
**
General Comments
**
Getting Started in Genealogy
**
Our GFA Facebook Group
**
Understanding Your DNA Test Results
**
Consider Transferring Your Autosomal DNA Test Results to Family Tree DNA
**
Strategies for Finding Immigrant Origins
**
New Book About Graves Trucking Line
**
Death of Writer John Alexander Graves of Glen Rose, Texas
**
Graves Family Books Still Available From Graves Family Association, and Future
Books
**
Who Do You Think You Are?
**
To Submit Material to this Bulletin & Other Things
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GENERAL
COMMENTS
This
issue of the Bulletin contains three articles about events that happened in the
month of July, including a series on getting started in genealogy, a series on
understanding your DNA test results, and the new season of the American version
of “Who Do You Think You Are?”
However, even though the live events are over, they are still available
via podcast or replay.
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GETTING
STARTED IN GENEALOGY
The
June 26 issue of The Weekly Genealogist,
the online newsletter of the New England Historic Genealogical Society,
announced a 3-part course on how to get started in genealogy on 3 Wednesdays,
July 17, 24, and 31, 6-8 p.m., in Boston.
The
announcement states: “There are plenty of websites, libraries, and
printed sources out there, but access to all that information can leave a
beginner feeling overwhelmed. Let an NEHGS expert help you navigate the first
steps in tracing your family history. Genealogist Rhonda R. McClure will share
her knowledge and helpful strategies for beginning your family history journey
in this three-part course.”
Tuition is $30 for the full course (all 3
sessions). To register, call
617-226-1226 or register
online. If you are interested
but aren’t in the Boston area, watch the online
seminar.
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OUR GFA
FACEBOOK GROUP
Most
of you are aware that the Graves Family Association has a Facebook group. You can go to it by clicking here. As we approach 600 members of this
group, there seems to be a need for finding who else in the group is related to
each member and where they live. To meet that need, an Excel file has been created and placed
on the page to provide the name of each member, their U.S. state or country of
residence, the genealogy group that person is part of, and some other
miscellaneous information. Anyone
in our Facebook group can go to our page, click on Files, and download the
member file. There are actually
two versions of the file, one sorted by name and the second sorted by genealogy
number. Once you download either
version, you can sort it any way you want.
A
copy of the two versions of the file are also on the GFA website as html pages
rather than as Excel files (so they can only be viewed there, not sorted). You can see these pages by going to the
GFA website and clicking the GFA Facebook Group link on the GFA/Forums
drop-down tab on the top right of every page. I have put some description of each of the table columns on
that page also.
I
hope to eventually have a more complex and interactive feature like this in the
membership section of the GFA website (if the membership section ever becomes
reality), which would include everyone on my contact list, not just our
Facebook group members.
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UNDERSTANDING
YOUR DNA TEST RESULTS
Family
Tree DNA posted the following notice:
Looking for more help
understanding your Y-DNA, mtDNA or Family Finder results?
This month's 3-part Genetic
Genealogy Demystified webinar series by Relative Roots begins this week on
Tuesday, July 9. All webinars are presented live at 1pm Eastern (5pm GMT). If
you cannot attend live, you can register to view the recording at your
convenience.
Tues, July 9: Part 1, Y-DNA
Tues, July 16: Part 2,
mtDNA
Tues, July 23: Part 3,
Family Finder (autosomal DNA)
All registered webinar
attendees will receive a limited-time coupon code providing a small discount on
select Family Tree DNA tests and upgrades! The coupon can't be used in
conjunction with sale prices, but it can be used on Y-DNA and mtDNA upgrades
since those are not on sale this month.
Click this link to visit the
Relative Roots website for more details and to register. Even though this notice is a bit late
and the live webinars are completed, you can still register and see all three
as recordings.
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CONSIDER
TRANSFERRING YOUR AUTOSOMAL DNA TEST RESULTS TO FAMILY TREE DNA
To transfer your 23andMe©
or AncestryDNA™ autosomal results to Family Tree DNA, go to their autosomal data
transfer page. This involves
downloading your raw autosomal DNA test results from 23andMe or Ancestry,
ordering the FTDNA transfer product ($69), and uploading the autosomal data to
FTDNA.
The benefit of this transfer is matching in Family Tree DNA’s Family Finder database without the need for additional testing.
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STRATEGIES FOR
FINDING IMMIGRANT ORIGINS
In
an article
on Mocavo, Michael J. Leclerc wrote on June 12, 2013, about five strategies for
finding immigrant origins.
Passenger lists and naturalization records are often not available. His suggestions for other records to
search are:
·
Church records
·
Death notices and obituaries
·
Grave markers
·
Organizational records
·
Compiled genealogies
You
can search for other articles on Michael Leclerc’s blog by clicking on the
“Search Blog” link at the top of his blog page.
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NEW BOOK ABOUT
GRAVES TRUCKING LINE
Sue Graves Smith wrote about a new
book for her part of the Graves family in Kansas. Her Graves family is genealogy 152 (Thomas Graves of
Lunenburg Co. & Mecklenburg Co., VA).
On the autosomal
DNA chart for genealogy 28, I speculate that the ancestry is that gen. 152
is descended from gen. 56, which is descended from gen. 220, which is descended
from gen. 28. On the detailed summary
chart for genealogy 228 (Greaves Family of Beeley, Derbyshire, England), I
further speculate that gen. 28 is descended from gen. 228.
Sue wrote: “Our branch of the Graves
family came from Mecklenburg County, Virginia through Tennessee to Webster
County, Missouri. By the early 1900s my grandfather William Preston
Graves I and most of his siblings had re-settled in and around Saline County,
Kansas. In the 1930s my grandparents lost their farm through foreclosure. They
moved into Salina and started over. William Preston Graves died in 1939 and his
four sons carried on a fledging business in trucking. It grew and prospered.
His namesake (grandson) William Preston Graves II was elected governor of
Kansas in 1994 and 1998. The book has lots of genealogy and great pictures!”
The book is: The Graves Truck Line Story
Author is Judy Magnuson Lilly
ISBN 978-0-9859130-0-7
Publisher: Sandglass Publishing
Printed by Mennonite Press, Inc.
Newton, Kansas
Cover price is $30, but I will charge
family members $25.
184 pages
Contact
Sue Graves Smith for details on how to order.
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DEATH OF
WRITER JOHN ALEXANDER GRAVES OF GLEN ROSE, TEXAS
John
Alexander Graves, well-known Texas author, died on July 31. The following obituary is from the Fort
Worth Star-Telegram.
“John Graves, the
dean of Texas letters, died shortly after midnight Wednesday at his home in
Glen Rose, Texas. He was 92.
Graves, author of
"Goodbye to a River" and other books about Texas, had been in ill
health recently, said a close family friend. He would have been 93 on Aug. 6.
Graves grew up in
Fort Worth and at his grandfather's ranch in Cuero. He studied literature at
Rice and as a graduate student at Columbia University.
"Goodbye to
a River," which Graves called the "river book," was published in
1960. It depicts his trip on the Brazos River in a canoe with his dog.
They paddled 175
serpentine river miles in three weeks through chilling rain, bitter blue
northers, and warm, radiant, yellow-winter afternoons.
Graves scribbled
in small notebooks all the while, seeing, remembering, feeling, and when the
trip was done, the writer possessed much more material than could ever be
squeezed into the magazine article he subsequently wrote.”
Click here
to see a more complete obituary in the Dallas
Morning News. He is also
profiled on the Graves Family Association page of famous family members (click
on Famous Family Members on the History/News drop-down tab at the top of the
page, and then click on his name).
In addition, Russ McAfee sent a link
to a video about John Graves.
Russ is descended from genealogy 270 (John Graves/Greaves of
Northamptonshire, England and VA), and is also a writer. Russ’s comment about John Graves is: “The
book he will always be remembered for was "Goodbye to a River." It
was to non-fiction about Texas what McMurtry's "Leaving Cheyenne,"
"Horsemen Pass By," and "The Last Picture Show" were to
fiction about the state. They both got it right.”
A reference to another
article in the New York Times was sent by Helen Graves, one of the two
daughters of John Graves.
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GRAVES FAMILY
BOOKS STILL AVAILABLE FROM GRAVES FAMILY ASSOCIATION, AND FUTURE BOOKS
Occasionally
I get asked about the Graves Family Association books that have been
published. There have been 7 books
about various Graves families, published from 1980 through 2002. You can see a description, prices, and
ordering instructions on the GFA
website by moving your cursor to the Products drop-down tab at the top of
each page, and clicking on the Books link. The books (listed below) are all still available, although a
couple are in very short supply.
·
Robert Graves of Anson Co., NC and Chesterfield Co., SC (descendant of
genealogy 270) -- very few left
·
Samuel Graves of Lynn, MA (genealogy 83)
·
Thomas Graves of Hartford, CT and Hatfield, MA (genealogy 168) –
very few left
·
Graves Families of the World (many genealogies)
·
Rear Admiral Thomas Graves of Charlestown, MA (genealogy 28) –
very few left
·
Deacon George Graves of Hartford, CT (genealogy 65)
·
John Graves of Concord, MA (genealogy 166)
FUTURE BOOKS
I
plan to publish other books for various Graves/Greaves families in the
future. These will probably be
e-books, print-on-demand books, or both.
There are several reasons for the delay in publishing additional books,
including the expense, my time, and the appropriate format and content. The major issue regarding content is
whether the books should include all descendants. Traditionally, genealogy books have always included all
descendants both living and dead.
This is true of the books I have already published. If living descendants aren’t included
(as with the genealogies on the GFA website), a large percentage of most
genealogies will not be available to the readers
SHOULD LIVING DESCENDANTS BE
IN FUTURE BOOKS?
Would
you buy a book about your family that doesn’t include you and your living
family members? What do you want
me to do about this issue? Should
I omit all living people (not always known who is still living), all
generations containing living people, everyone born in the last 100 years, or
what? Please let me know what you
think. My hope is that we can eventually
come to a consensus decision, since it would be a tragedy for me not to share
all the information I have gathered over many years.
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WHO DO YOU
THINK YOU ARE?
The
U.S. version of the British TV show, “Who Do You Think You Are?” started July
23 with Kelly Clarkson. This
season’s episodes will be on The
Learning Channel on Tuesdays at 9 PM Eastern (8 PM Central), and are aimed
at a younger audience. There will
be 8
celebrities featured this season.
Any
episodes that you miss can be watched online.
Non-celebrities
will be featured in a similar show, “Genealogy
Roadshow”, on Public Television starting in September.
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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
on GFA website). Payment may also
be sent electronically to gfa@gravesfa.org via PayPal.
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
purposes only.