GRAVES FAMILY BULLETIN
Vol. 16, No. 7, July 14,
2014
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
© 2014 by the Graves Family Association and Kenneth V. Graves. All rights reserved.
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CONTENTS
**
General Comments
**
Graves Families of New England and Canada Descended From the Greaves Family of
Beeley, Derbyshire, England
**
A Capsule History of Ancestry.com
**
More Consolidation of Genealogy Information Companies
**
Chimeras and DNA Testing
**
Explanation of How to Use DNA Testing to Find Ancestors
**
The Grave/Graves Family of Cumbria and Cambridgeshire, England
**
New Season of Genealogy Programs on TV in the U.S.
**
More Maps of the American Nations
**
New Y-DNA Haplotree From Family Tree DNA
**
How Various Graves/Greaves Families Relate to Each Other
**
Top 5 Reasons to Take a DNA Test According to Ancestry.com`
**
To Submit Material to this Bulletin & Other Things
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GENERAL
COMMENTS
There
is no particular theme to this issue of the Bulletin. As usual, there seems to be a lot about DNA testing.
We
wish you a happy July, and a happy Bastille Day for those of you who celebrate
that holiday.
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GRAVES
FAMILIES OF NEW ENGLAND AND CANADA DESCENDED FROM THE GREAVES FAMILY OF BEELEY,
DERBYSHIRE, ENGLAND
GENEALOGY 228
The
Greaves family of Beeley, Derbyshire (genealogy 228) is the earliest known of
its family group. BurkeÕs Commoners, 1838, says, the first of the
members of this family Òof whom we possess any authentic record is ------ Les
Greaves who was settled at Beeley and Greaves as early as the time of Henry I
(reigned 1100-1135, fourth son of William the Conqueror), from which time until
the end of the seventeenth century, his descendants continued to reside there.Ó A lineage given in genealogy 228 starts
with John Grevis, b.c. 1175, but the genealogy itself starts with John Greaves,
born about 1490.
The
descendants of this Greaves family comprise the largest family group of any of
the Graves/Greaves groups on the GFA website. The list of genealogies can be seen on the Charts page of
the website by clicking here. An overall summary chart of how some of
these families may be connected can be seen here. There are also other summary charts
available in this section.
There
is a great need to have more information about the descendants of gen. 228, and
to get more male Greaves descendants to take a Y-DNA test at a high resolution
(preferably 111 markers). We only
have 2 descendants of gen. 228 who have taken the test so far, and those at a
fairly low number of markers.
MAJOR FAMILIES IN THIS GROUP
The
largest families (the families that have the largest genealogies) that are part
of this group in America are Rear Admiral Thomas Graves of Charlestown, MA
(gen. 28), John Graves of Concord, MA (gen. 166), John Greaves of St. MaryÕs
Co., MD (gen. 247), and Francis Graves of VA (gen. 220). Families in England include the Greaves
family of Macclesfield, Cheshire (gen. 334). Many more descendants in England need to be tested.
DANIEL GRAVES AND MARY
FERGUSON OF NH & ONTARIO, CANADA, AND OTHER FAMILIES OF NB AND NS
This
is genealogy 207, and I previously guessed that it might be descended from
genealogy 165 (William Graves of Dover, NH). However, the Y-DNA test results clearly show that gen. 207
is part of the gen. 228 group.
William Graves of gen. 165 may not even have any Graves ancestry back in
England, as mentioned in the beginning of that genealogy.
Genealogy
207 could be descended from either gen. 28 or gen. 166. However, my guess is that gen. 28 is
more likely. The descendants of
Rear Adm. Thomas Graves (gen. 28) seem to have been more loyal to England
during the American Revolution, and more of them seem to have moved to
Canada. In addition to those who
went to Ontario, there was a large Graves family that ended up in New Brunswick
and Nova Scotia. This was the
descendants of Lt. William Graves (genealogy 238), that was probably descended
from Joseph Graves and Rachel Pratt of Framingham, MA (gen. 133) and probably
before that from gen. 28.
GRAVES FAMILIES IN THE
SOUTHERN U.S.
As
with all the families in this group that settled in America, the name was
changed from Greaves to Graves.
All of the families in this group in the southern U.S. seem to have been
descended from genealogy 166 (John Graves of Concord, MA), genealogy 247 (John
Greaves of St. MaryÕs Co., MD), or genealogy 220 (Francis Graves of VA). There appears to have been more
interaction between England and the colonies, and more travel between the New
England colonies and the southern colonies (especially MD and VA), in the early
days (1600s and 1700s) than has been generally recognized. For instance, it is believed that the
group of families from Surry Co. and Randolph Co., NC, were probably descended
from genealogy 166, and genealogy 220 may be descended from genealogy 28, both
New England families.
PLANS TO FIND MORE PRECISE
CONNECTIONS BETWEEN FAMILIES
Although
we would prefer to find documentation for all the many families that share this
common Greaves ancestry, our best hope is to find more precise connections via
DNA testing. For descendants of
genealogies that are part of this group, it would be helpful for at least one
male in each family to upgrade their Y-DNA test to 111 markers. In addition, we need to use the
relatively new SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism) tests such as Big Y from
Family Tree DNA to find SNPs that are unique to each genealogy and perhaps to
lines within the larger genealogies.
You will be hearing more about that in the future.
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A CAPSULE
HISTORY OF ANCESTRY.COM
The
following is an interesting follow-up to the article in the last GF Bulletin
titled ÒAncestry.com Discontinuing Several Services and Businesses.Ó
There
has been much recent discussion about Ancestry.com as a result of their
discontinuing some of their services and because of the recent denial of
services attack on their websites.
(The week of June 16, Ancestry and its subsidiaries were subjected to a
Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS) attack, which is an attempt to overload
servers and prevent customers from being able to access the websites. You can see more about that on
Wikipedia here.)
Ralph
Taylor (on the ISOGG list) recently shared this brief history of Ancestry.com
on June 20 (with a few additions and editing changes).
Questions
were raised about Ancestry.comÕs relationship with the LDS church and the
influence of Permira that acquired them in 2012. RalphÕs
response was: Permira is headquartered in Luxembourg. They are a large conglomerate
or hedge fund with investments in businesses ranging from clothing &
crockery through genetics software to satellites. Their history has been one of owning, not managing,
companies. My forecast at the time
as to the affect on Ancestry of PermiraÕs acquisition was ÒNot much, especially
in the short term.Ó Nor, do I see a Permira hand in the recent developments --
unless their deep pockets attracted the DDOS attack. They paid 1.265 billion
Euros for Ancestry and that was only their fifth-largest recent transaction.
The
Ancestry/LDS relationship is historically of long standing and more subtle.
¥ 1983, The company was
founded in 1983 in Salt Lake City, Utah, to publish genealogy books and
magazines. Given the nature of the genealogy community, it would almost be fair
to describe Ancestry as growing out of the LDSÕ Family History Library, also in
Salt Lake. A genealogy business needs access to many records and almost no
genealogy repository is as large as the FHL.
¥ 1996, Ancestry.com website
launched
¥ 1997, Infobases, Inc.
acquired a controlling interest
¥ 1998, myfamily.com was
introduced as a social networking site.
¥ 1999, the holding company
name was changed to MyFamily.com Inc.
¥ 2000, Rootsweb.com -- a free
competitor, supported by advertising -- was acquired; this led to GenWeb
(online archive of genealogical records) leaving Rootsweb.
¥ 2002, UK version went up.
¥ 2005, HeritageMakers.com was
acquired;
¥ 2006, another name change
– to ÒThe Generations NetworkÓ; expansion to Germany.
¥ 2007, expansion to
Australia, France, Italy, China, & Sweden. The Generations Network was
acquired by Spectrum Equity Investors; DNA testing was launched as AncestryDNA.
(This followed acquisition of the Sorenson databases & Relative Genetics,
about 2005.)
¥ 2008, expansion to Toronto, Ontario,
Canada and launch of jiapu.com for Chinese customers.
¥ 2009, name changed again
– to Ancestry.com, Inc. – and stock goes to public trading as ACOM.
Global family tree website, mundia.com, launched in 12 languages.
¥ 2010, sponsored US version
of WDYTYA (it continues); acquires genline.se, progenealogist.com, &
footnote.com; introduced Mac version of Family Tree Maker.
¥ 2011, apps for iPads &
iPhones, one million downloads in four months.
¥ 2012, autosomal DNA testing
introduced; Ancestry notched two million subscribers; Permira acquired
company. (Permira is a European equity firm with offices in
many different places (London, Paris, Madrid, Luxembourg, Tokyo, Milan,
Frankfurt, etc). The press release
from Ancestry about the acquisition is here.
Here's the Permira website. Sorenson's database and GeneTree were
acquired in 2012.
¥ 2013, autosomal testing made
available to all US customers; acquired Find A Grave Inc.; reached exclusive
agreement with FamilySearch to digitize, by 2018, one billion records held in a
vault; added ethnic origins to DNA results.
¥ 2014, expanded prior
FamilySearch agreement to make the digitized records available on its service;
officially announced end of Y-DNA & mtDNA testing; suffered DDOS attack. Both FamilySearch (with the FHL) and
Ancestry seem to gain. FamilySearch fulfills its mission by making the
heretofore-inaccessible records available (i.e., the records come out of their
cave), especially to LDS members & FHC users. Ancestry makes its service
more valuable to its paying customers.
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MORE
CONSOLIDATION OF GENEALOGY INFORMATION COMPANIES
BACKGROUND
Recently
we learned about Ancestry.com acquiring companies and then discontinuing some
of those products. The following
announcement from Cliff Shaw, founder of Mocavo, about their being acquired by
Findmypast seems to be another example of this consolidating trend. However, my superficial understanding
of this situation is that maybe Findmypast buying Mocavo is good for everyone,
including the customers.
The
Mocavo blog of July 12 announced that
there will be a live discussion by Michael Leclerc of Mocavo and Joshua Taylor
of Findmypast on Wednesday, July 16, at 5 PM EST about what the future holds
for the merged company.
COMPETITORS
Findmypast is a privately held UK-based
online genealogy service owned by British company DC Thomson Family
History. They are a competitor to Ancestry.com and MyHeritage. (Inflection was a potential player in
this arena back in 2012 as owner of PeopleSmart and Archives.com but true to
the message of this article, Ancestry.com acquired Archives.com in 2012.) FamilySearch.org can also be considered
a competitor, although they are much different, being a volunteer-based,
religion-based, non-profit, free service.
ANNOUNCEMENT FROM MOCAVO
ÒToday
is an exciting day for genealogists everywhere as we're announcing that Mocavo
has been acquired by Findmypast/DC Thomson Family History. This is a
groundbreaking development for the industry and a major turning point in
Mocavo's quest to bring all the world's historical information online for free.
The wonderful folks at DC Thomson Family History share our vision of the future
of family history, and we couldn't be more excited to join them.
For
the past few years, the Mocavo team and I have dedicated ourselves to bringing
innovation and competition to an industry that is sorely lacking in both. From
the very beginning of Mocavo's history, we had this burning desire to figure
out how to organize all of the historical information disparately spread across
the Web. Not long ago, even with a hard-working and incredibly talented team,
our service wasn't resonating with users and our business wasn't working. In
October of last year, we decided to do something audacious and bold –
something never before tried in the industry. We launched our Free Forever revolution and this became
the day when MocavoÕs soul was born. Everything turned around once we put a
stake in the ground and stood for free genealogy (and now Mocavo is growing
rapidly, putting more than 1,000 free databases online every single day and
more users discovering us than ever). We have our loyal and supportive users to
thank more than anyone!
One
of the immediate benefits of the acquisition is that weÕre putting the complete
US Census index online for free (forever!), making us the first commercial
provider in history to ever do this. Search
the United States Federal Census Now.
The
next few months are going to be incredibly exciting as we bring together two
companies with enormous resources, content, and technology to bring you more of
what you love. IÕll also note that nothing on either site will be going away
– just getting better (and quickly!).
Lastly,
we could not have done this without the support of our loyal community members.
We appreciate your dedication and patience, and we look forward to helping you
discover even more of your familyÕs story.Ó
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CHIMERAS AND
DNA TESTING
A
recent article by Michael J. Leclerc on the Mocavo blog is titled ÒWhat Happens When the DNA Lies?Ó It discusses the fact that occasionally
with humans a personÕs DNA may not match that of a parent or child. The cause of it is what is called
chimerism. Chimerism is having
parts of a body made from a completely different being. The recent case discussed by Michael
Leclerc was of a mother whose DNA did not match that of her children. The cause of the problem was that a
fraternal twin had not survived at a very early stage of development in her
motherÕs womb, and her twin had been absorbed into her. Only cells from her thyroid were found
to match those of her children.
This kind of non-matching is very rare, but it is helpful to know that
it can happen.
Even
though chimerism as a cause of non-matching of DNA is rare, it may not be that
uncommon to have some degree of chimerism with cells in our body from a child,
a mother, or a twin, according to another
recent article.
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EXPLANATION OF
HOW TO USE DNA TESTING TO FIND ANCESTORS
An
article published by Roberta Estes on July 6 in her DNAeXplained blog is titled
ÒIdentifying
Possible Common Ancestors Utilizing Multiple Tests.Ó It is an attempt to explain how each
test works and how they can be used in combination to find ancestors and
relatives. You may find it of
help.
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THE
GRAVE/GRAVES FAMILY OF CUMBRIA AND CAMBRIDGESHIRE, ENGLAND
As
part of my effort to try to make the master table of Y-DNA test results on the
Family Tree DNA website more helpful, I have been looking at the group from
Cambridgeshire and Cumbria labeled R1-377 in the table. Because there was so much diversity
within that group, I thought that perhaps it contained non-closely-related
genealogies. I have removed the
U.S. families related to genealogy 13 and put them in their own R1-013 group,
and a few others have been put in the R-Ungrouped group.
I
am confident that the families of Cambridgeshire and Cumbria do share a common
ancestor, but the large distance between the two locations puzzles me. Not only are they about 250 miles
apart, but also the families in each location have been there a long time. The earliest genealogy we have in
Cottenham, Cambridgeshire dates to 1576, and the earliest in Cumbria/Cumberland
dates to 1565. What might explain
two related groups of families in two places with no known gradual migration
route and no related families in between?
My theory is that the family originated in Cumbria and that at least one
family member went to the Cottenham area, either as a student as a student at
Cambridge University (which is only 6 miles south of Cottenham) or as an
appointee at the University (clerical or academic). One
account from the GenUKI website shows the connection between Cottenham and
the University of Cambridge. The
map below shows the distance between Keswick, Cumbria and Cottenham.
It
was interesting to read the account (in a Wikipedia article) of the
great fire of 1850 in Cottenham, probably started by a man who was working for
a Thomas Graves. That same article
also mentions that John Coolidge, ancestor of U.S. President J. Calvin Coolidge
(a descendant of genealogy 28), was born in Cottenham.
I
would be very interested in any research that might support or offer an
alternative explanation to my suggestion of why the two parts of the family are
so geographically separated.
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NEW SEASON OF
GENEALOGY PROGRAMS ON TV IN THE U.S.
A
new season of six new episodes of the U.S. version of Who Do You Think You Are? will start on July 23 at 9 PM on the TLC
Network. More information is
available here.
For
anyone who missed any of last yearÕs Who
Do You Think You Are? programs in the U.S. version, they will all be
rebroadcast one after the other on TLC on Sunday, July 20 and again on July 23.
The
PBS documentary series, Genealogy Roadshow,
is looking for stories for the upcoming season. Unlike Who Do You
Think You Are? which is about the ancestry of celebrities, this show Òaims
to reunite people from all walks of life with their past, present and
future.Ó For more information,
click here.
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MORE MAPS OF
THE AMERICAN NATIONS
There
have been articles about online maps in the March 30, April 22, May 22, and
June 9 issues of this bulletin.
This latest
article of May 21 from JayManÕs Blog is not about genealogy, but it may be
helpful in understanding our ancestors, the effects they have on us, and why
people in various parts of North America think and behave differently.
His
premise (for which he gives a rather complete and reasoned argument) is that
when people migrate from one place to another, they donÕt really get
assimilated except superficially.
Their thinking and behavior stays the same, even over many
generations. For example, people
from England tend to think and behave differently from those from Germany, even
after centuries of living in a new land.
There are many very interesting maps.
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NEW Y-DNA
HAPLOTREE FROM FAMILY TREE DNA
Debbie
Kennett has recently published an
article about the revised and expanded Y-DNA haplotree from Family Tree
DNA. Family Tree DNA created the
2014 Y-DNA Haplotree in partnership with the National Geographic Genographic
Project using the proprietary GenoChip. Launched publicly in late 2012, the
chip tests approximately 10,000 Y-DNA SNPs that had not, at the time, been
phylogenetically classified.
This
is interesting, but there has been criticism of the new tree, some people
feeling that the tree on the ISOGG website is much better. The consensus seems to be that creating
and maintaining the haplotree is a huge effort and people should try to be
patient as the errors and changes develop. In the meantime, it is interesting to see the many changes
and additions. There will
definitely be some changes to this tree and to the suggestions from FTDNA for
testing of SNPs. As always, if you
are thinking about ordering SNP testing, you should consult with the
appropriate haplogroup project administrator.
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HOW VARIOUS
GRAVES/GREAVES FAMILIES RELATE TO EACH OTHER
All
the Graves and Greaves male descendants whose Y-DNA has been tested have been
in haplogroups E, I, J, Q, and R, with most of them being in haplogroup R. You
can see how these haplogroups relate to each other on the simplified chart I
created in 2008 here, and
on the 2014 ISOGG chart here, and on the FTDNA
chart (a simpler and easier to understand page) here. More complete information about the
ISOGG tree can be seen here.
If
you go to the bottom of the DNA test results page
on the GFA website (to the Y-DNA SNP Testing section, you will see a series of
links to charts for each Y-DNA haplogroup. As more Graves/Greaves descendants get tested there charts
will become much more complete and useful. We especially need for male descendants with the
Graves/Greaves surname to be tested for recommended SNPs (working with the
appropriate haplogroup project administrator) and for at least one male in each
genealogy to take a test such as Big Y.
The haplogroup R chart is presently the most complete.
On
the Charts page of the GFA website (also called the numerical index page), you
can find charts showing how it is believed that various genealogies descended
from a common ancestor may be connected.
DNA testing is needed to find more specific connections. You can also see most recent Y-DNA test
results in the Master
DNA test results table on the FTDNA website.
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TOP 5 REASONS
TO TAKE A DNA TEST ACCORDING TO ANCESTRY.COM
An article in the Ancestry.com blog, dated 2
July 2014, gave 5 reasons to take a DNA test. Although there are many other
reasons, the top 5, according to Ancestry.com are:
¥ Learning your ethnicity
¥ Breaking through a brick
wall
¥ Leaving a legacy
¥ Connecting to a cousin
¥ Making new discoveries
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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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If
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COPYRIGHTS:
Although
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and Kenneth V. Graves, you are hereby granted permission, unless otherwise
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