GRAVES FAMILY BULLETIN
Vol. 17, No. 6, Aug. 3, 2015
A
Free, Occasional, Online Summary of Items of Interest to Descendants of all
Families of Graves, Greaves, Grieves, Grave, and other spelling variations
Worldwide
===============================================================
Copyright
2015 by the Graves Family Association and Kenneth V. Graves. All rights reserved.
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CONTENTS
**
General Comments
**
Interesting Genealogy and Surname Website
**
News About Graves/Greaves Family Members
**
Updates to the GFA Website
**
Newly Published North Carolina Estate Files Index Books
**
DNA Testing Strategy for Adoptees and People With Uncertain Parentage
**
African-American Help: Historic Freedmens Bureau Records Released
**
Slavery in British Colonies
**
Latest Update on Jimmy Greaves, English Football (Soccer) Star
**
L. C. Graves, Police Officer Who Took Gun From Jack Ruby
**
Preserve More of Your Familys History While Getting More Family Members
Interested
**
To Submit Material to this Bulletin & Other Things
===============================================================
GENERAL
COMMENTS
The
publishing of this issue keeps getting delayed by other activities, but here it
finally is. I may publish another
issue within the next couple of weeks, or I may not. Well see.
I
have included several articles about Graves/Greaves family members in this
issue. The next issue will include
more information about DNA testing, especially about the testing of SNPs (single
nucleotide polymorphisms) that are becoming the best way to determine
relationships and ancestry.
===============================================================
INTERESTING
GENEALOGY AND SURNAME WEBSITE
A
website called forebears was recently called to my attention.
ABOUT
FOREBEARS
Forebears
is a genealogy portal featuring:
A geographically indexed and
cross-referenced directory of sources for family history research
A dictionary of surname
meanings, including information on their geographic distribution
News articles and
genealogical research advice
The
main aim of the site is to bring together the wide variety of genealogical
sources available on and off-line and catalogue them; so as to make them easily
accessible by researchers looking for records relating to ancestors in a
particular town, region or country.
The
site was launched on the 20th of June 2012. You can go to the website here.
ABOUT
THE IO EXTENSION AND DOMAIN
.io
is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the British Indian
Ocean Territory. The .io domain
name is administered by the Internet Computer Bureau, a company based in the
United Kingdom. Google currently
treats .io as a generic top-level domain (gTLD) because "users and
webmasters frequently see [the domain] more generic than
country-targeted". The .io
domain extension has existed since 1997, and has grown steadily in popularity
ever since. .io domains now compose 0.1% of all websites.
ABOUT
THE SURNAME SECTION
You
can go to the surname part of the website by clicking here. In this section you can read about the origin of surnames,
and the various types of surnames.
You can also search for any surname of interest, and see the meanings
and distribution of 11 million surnames.
Searching provides the following results:
Graves,
4,726th most common surname in the world, approximately 115,369 bear
this surname, most prevalent in the U.S.
A
world map and a table of the number of those of each surname in each country
for several years are displayed.
Much other information is provided, including surname variants and
similar surnames. The results for
Graves in 2014 are below.
Country |
Incidence |
Frequency |
Rank in Nation |
United States |
95,386 |
1: 3,358 |
336 |
England |
7,335 |
1: 7,362 |
1,035 |
Canada |
3,512 |
1: 10,088 |
1,489 |
Australia |
1,426 |
1: 16,526 |
2,194 |
Germany |
975 |
1: 82,786 |
10,136 |
Ghana |
799 |
1: 33,846 |
3,725 |
France |
723 |
1: 91,230 |
12,921 |
South Africa |
621 |
1: 86,960 |
10,268 |
Philippines |
516 |
1: 193,990 |
25,252 |
Guatemala |
431 |
1: 36,674 |
2,778 |
Greaves,
the 14,182nd most common surname in the world, approximately 37,260
people bear this surname, most prevalent in England. The results for Greaves in 2014 are here.
Country |
Incidence |
Frequency |
Rank in Nation |
England |
12,142 |
1: 4,447 |
556 |
United States |
6,438 |
1: 49,747 |
6,050 |
Liberia |
4,820 |
1: 912 |
122 |
Australia |
2,988 |
1: 7,887 |
1,046 |
Canada |
1,936 |
1: 18,299 |
2,549 |
South Africa |
1,808 |
1: 29,868 |
3,607 |
Barbados |
1,194 |
1: 239 |
34 |
Trinidad and Tobago |
850 |
1: 1,562 |
234 |
Jamaica |
750 |
1: 3,624 |
508 |
New Zealand |
639 |
1: 7,115 |
1,134 |
These
rankings are by estimated totals in each county. Sorting by rank in nation for all nations gives much different
results. For Graves it is as below for those nations in the top 2,000.
Country |
Incidence |
Frequency |
Rank
in Nation |
United States |
95,386 |
1: 3,358 |
336 |
land |
1 |
1: 28,502 |
408 |
San Marino |
1 |
1: 33,664 |
586 |
Isle of Man |
21 |
1: 4,095 |
699 |
Saint Lucia |
3 |
1: 60,000 |
722 |
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines |
1 |
1: 109,000 |
821 |
England |
7,335 |
1: 7,362 |
1,035 |
Wales |
373 |
1: 8,311 |
1,062 |
Jersey |
17 |
1: 5,824 |
1,163 |
South Korea |
7 |
1: 7,203,422 |
1,179 |
The Bahamas |
2 |
1: 175,730 |
1,472 |
Canada |
3,512 |
1: 10,088 |
1,489 |
Belize |
1 |
1: 349,728 |
1,879 |
New Zealand |
391 |
1: 11,629 |
1,928 |
For
Greaves it is as below for those nations in the top 1,000. It is interesting to see that Greaves
is more common in more countries than Graves, mostly in former British
colonies. (See the Slavery in British
Colonies article in this issue for one possible explanation for that.)
Country |
Incidence |
Frequency |
Rank
in Nation |
Barbados |
1,194 |
1: 239 |
34 |
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines |
262 |
1: 416 |
64 |
Montserrat |
10 |
1: 492 |
86 |
Liberia |
4,820 |
1: 912 |
122 |
Bermuda |
50 |
1: 1,285 |
174 |
Saint Lucia |
149 |
1: 1,208 |
210 |
Trinidad and Tobago |
850 |
1: 1,562 |
234 |
Anguilla |
4 |
1: 3,363 |
325 |
Grenada |
48 |
1: 2,153 |
356 |
Guyana |
381 |
1: 2,060 |
362 |
Jamaica |
750 |
1: 3,624 |
508 |
England |
12,142 |
1: 4,447 |
556 |
Vanuatu |
1 |
1: 264,652 |
573 |
British Virgin Islands |
1 |
1: 29,537 |
799 |
Cape Verde |
1 |
1: 491,875 |
801 |
United States Virgin Islands |
18 |
1: 5,911 |
886 |
Wales |
418 |
1: 7,416 |
934 |
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NEWS ABOUT
GRAVES/GREAVES FAMILY MEMBERS
An
interesting story about ANTHONY GRAVES
was published on the NBC News website on June 27, 2015. It is titled How
Anthony Graves Went from Death Row to Overseeing the Houston Crime Lab. The headline is slightly misleading,
since he isnt the head of the crime lab, but rather he has been appointed as a
member of the board of directors of the Houston Forensic Science Center, which
has replaced the problem-filled crime lab. Since his wrongful conviction for a multiple murder and
being sentenced to death, his 18 years in prison, and his exoneration and
release five years ago, he has been traveling the country telling his story and
urging reforms to the criminal justice system.
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UPDATES TO THE
GFA WEBSITE
Updated
charts:
chart693.pdf
chart934.pdf
New
genealogies:
Gen. 533, Charles William
Graves and Laura Masters of VA, TX & OK
Gen. 539, Joshua Graves and
Sarah ------ of AL & MS
Updated
genealogies:
Gen. 13, William Graves and
Elizabeth ------ of VA, NC. TN & KY
Gen. 62, Joseph Graves and
Matilda Simpson of KY
Gen. 78, James Graves and
Sarah ------ of SC & GA
Gen. 126, Thomas Graves of
Northampton Co., VA
Gen. 127, George Graves and
Esther Tate of Caswell Co., NC
Gen. 148, John S. Graves of
NC, Livingston Co., KY & Johnson Co., IL
Gen. 208, John Graves and
Susanna ------ of VT, NY, OH and IL
Gen. 218, Warren Graves and
Harriette ------ of Caswell Co. & Rockingham Co., NC
Gen. 220, Francis Graves of
Gloucester Co. & Essex Co., VA
Gen. 247, John Greaves of
St. Marys Co., MD
Gen. 658, Parents of John
Graves and Samuel Graves of Caswell Co., NC
Gen. 693, Thomas S. Graves,
Mariah ------, and Olive Owens of Otsego Co., NY
Gen. 934, Robert Greaves and
Sarah Cooper of Alfreton, Derbyshire & Calverton, Nottinghamshire
Other
pages and documents:
African Ancestry page
(african.php)
Numerical Index and Charts
page (charts.php)
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NEWLY
PUBLISHED NORTH CAROLINA ESTATE FILES INDEX BOOKS
Patricia
Wyatt Pickens (descended from genealogy 780, William Graves and Hannah Ward of
SC) wrote that a friend of hers has
recently written some Index books she has for sale, $20.00 each, that our
Graves list may find helpful. Enclosed is the information about them.
Perquimans
County, North Carolina Estate Files Index
Chowan
County, North Carolina Estate Files Index
Gates
County, North Carolina Estate Files Index
Camden,
Currituck & Dare County, North Carolina Estate Files Index
Pasquotank
County, North Carolina Estate Files Index
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DNA TESTING
STRATEGY FOR ADOPTEES AND PEOPLE WITH UNCERTAIN PARENTAGE
Roberta
Estes in her DNAeXplained blog has written a good article on this subject. You can see the article here.
===============================================================
AFRICAN-AMERICAN
HELP: HISTORIC FREEDMENS BUREAU RECORDS RELEASED
Another
resource for tracing African-American ancestry has just been announced. A June 19 article in Eastmans Online
Genealogy Newsletter said that Family Search International and 4 other
organizations are launching the digital release of 4 million freed slave
records and the launch of a nationwide volunteer indexing effort. The goal is to have the records fully
indexed by late 2016. It appears
that these records have been previously available on microfilm, but this
project will make this information tremendously easier and quicker to
search. You can see the complete
article here.
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SLAVERY IN
BRITISH COLONIES
SLAVERY RECORDS IN THE CARIBBEAN
Roberta
Estes in her DNAeXplained blog has written an article titled Britains
Forgotten Slave Owners. Her
article is mostly about the island of Jamaica, but it applies to all British
possessions in the Caribbean in the 1700s and 1800s. Records in the British Archives listing slave owners and the
records in the Caribbean can be searched here. A quick search of the database shows 27
slave owners named Greaves in Barbados, Jamaica, and the Virgin Islands, with
233 slaves. The British slave
trade was abolished in 1807, and slavery was finally abolished in the British
Caribbean, Mauritius, and the Cape, in 1833. The British government made payments to British slave owners
in 1834, and the slaves were then freed after they served another 6 years
working for their former masters for free.
A BBC documentary on this
subject can be viewed here, part 2 can
be viewed here, and a series of
lectures can be seen here. More information and links are
available in Robertas article.
The numerous sexual encounters of overseers and non-absentee owners discussed
in the article seems to explain the large number of residents in the former
British colonies with European names (and genetic descent), including Greaves. (See the first article in this issue of
the Graves Family Bulletin.)
PRESENT-DAY DESCENDANTS
I
frequently see online articles about government officials and other people from
the Caribbean nations. A recent
article can be seen here about the announcement that former cabinet minister
and Deputy Prime Minister, Sir Philip Marlowe Greaves, will act as
Governor-General during the month of August in Barbados. This is because from August 1 to 31,
Their Excellencies the Governor-General and Lady Belgrave will be travelling
overseas on a private visit.
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LATEST UPDATE
ON JIMMY GREAVES, ENGLISH FOOTBALL (SOCCER) STAR
Jimmy Greaves, one of the
greatest English football (soccer) players of all time, is mentioned in the
sidebar on the main page of the GFA website, and is also included on the
Notable Family Members page of the website. He suffered a stroke on May 3, and there was an article
about him in the May issue of this
bulletin. Then on July 8 there was
a
story in the Mirror titled
Chelsea ace set to help Jimmy Greaves after 5.5m lottery win. This story was about Jimmys former
teammate Terry Bradbury, who recently won the lottery and is considering using
some of it to help Jimmy.
The
Harwich and Manningtree Standard
posted a
story on 19 July 2015 about a campaign organized by family and friends of
Jimmy Greaves to raise 30,000 in a month to cover his rehabilitation treatment
as he recovers from a stroke.
Terry Baker, Jimmys agent, set up the fundraising campaign as a
surprise to Jimmy. He estimated
that 1,000 hours of treatment at 60 an hour will be needed.
===============================================================
L. C. GRAVES,
POLICE OFFICER WHO TOOK GUN FROM JACK RUBY
A
cousin in Texas sent me information last month about L. C. Graves, the Dallas
police detective who wrestled the gun from Jack Ruby after he shot Lee Harvey
Oswald (President John F. Kennedys killer) in 1963. After doing some research, I found that he was descended
from Joshua Graves, born about 1794 in KY or AL, now the first generation of
genealogy 539. Information about
Joshua is in the next paragraph, followed by information about L. C.
Graves. It would be interesting to
discover the earlier ancestry of Joshua and which branch of the Graves families
he belongs to (by DNA testing or further research). Please let me know if you would like to help.
Joshua Graves (1) was born about 1794 in KY (according to the 1850 census) or AL (according to most researchers). He married Sarah ‑‑‑‑‑‑. She was born about 1795 in NC (according to the 1850 census) or AL (according to most researchers). They were in the 1830 and 1840 censuses for Wilcox Co., AL. They were in the 1850 census for Smith Co., MS, with children Wilson, Edmond, Elizabeth, and Jane still at home. According to the 1850 census, all their children were born in NC. Smith Co. is due west of Wilcox Co., and next to Rankin and Covington counties, MS. Based on where they lived, it is possible Joshua was related to genealogy 150.
Children – Graves
2, daughter, b.c. 1818.
+3. Wilson Graves, b.c. 1820, m. Paralee E. ‑‑‑‑‑‑, d. before 1880.
4. son, b.c. 1825-1830.
5. daughter, b.c. 1825-1830.
6. daughter, b.c. 1830.
7. son, b.c. 1831-1835.
8. Edmond Graves, b.c. 1835. He may have been the J. E. Graves in the 1860 census for Smith Co., MS, working as a farm laborer for W. C. Boykin, and the John E. Graves in the 1870 census for Smith Co., MS, married to Rebecca with children Ardena and Martha E. J..
+9. Elizabeth Graves, b. 26 Sept. 1836, m. John Wesley Price, 1860, d. 21 Nov. 1906.
10. Jane Graves, b.c. 1840.
L. C. Graves (67) was born 8 Oct. 1918 in TX, and died 11 Feb. 1995 in Kaufman, Kaufman Co., TX. He married Myrtle (Myrt) E. Robertson, daughter of Ridgell L. Robertson and Zelma L. Pulliam.
From his obituary in the New York Times:
KAUFMAN, Tex., Feb. 13— L. C. Graves, the Dallas police detective who wrestled the gun away from Jack Ruby after he shot Lee Harvey Oswald, died on Saturday at Presbyterian Hospital here. Mr. Graves, who lived in Kaufman, a county seat 33 miles east of Dallas, was 76.
The cause was heart failure, his family said.
Mr. Graves was one of three Dallas law-enforcement officers detailed to escort Oswald, who had been charged with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, as he was being taken from the city jail to the county jail on Nov. 24, 1963.
In the moment after Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, shot Oswald in the basement of the Dallas City Hall, Mr. Graves, who was wearing a dark hat and walking on Oswald's left, between him and Ruby, grabbed the revolver and Ruby's wrist.
The move prevented Ruby from firing a second shot, but Oswald died in surgery (not on the way to the hospital as first reported). Ruby, who was convicted of murder in 1964, died of cancer in 1967.
Mr. Graves was with the Dallas Police Department for 21 years, retiring in 1970.
Surviving are his wife, Myrt, and two sons, Terry and Gary, of Kaufman; a brother, Jesse, of Pittsburg, Tex.; a sister, Sue Sullivan of Mineola, Tex., and six grandchildren.
A story was posted at kcentv.com in Dallas on July 25, 2015 (20 years after his death), titled Kennedy-Era Dallas Police Officer to be Given Medal of Honor.
DALLAS (WFAA) -- On November 24, 1963, former Dallas police detective Jim Leavelle says Officer L.C. Graves saved his life.
"I am confident I would have gotten one bullet," Leavelle said, "maybe two."
Leavelle is the detective who was handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald when Jack Ruby shot him as he was being escorted from DPD Headquarters.
Officer Graves grabbed Ruby's gun.
In an interview on the day of the shooting, Graves said, "Well, I grabbed his arm, and took the pistol away from him."
Leavelle says he saw Ruby repeatedly trying to pull the trigger, but Graves grabbed the cylinder, preventing it from rotating.
"When L.C. grabbed him by the wrist with his left hand and he grabbed the cylinder of the pistol with his right — I can see that picture today just as well as I can see this picture right here," Leavelle told News 8.
Officer Graves was never honored for his heroic actions, until now.
"It was the crime of the century, and officers were trying to solve and investigate the crime of the century - the assassination of the president - and that was much more important than medals back then," said Sr. Cpl. Rick Janich.
Leavelle and Janich, who runs the Dallas Police Department Museum, wanted Graves to be given the Medal of Valor posthumously. It's a high honor for officers who help save lives.
So, more than 50 years later, Graves is getting his medal.
"I told him," Leavelle said. "I always told him, that day when we came back from Parkland, I said, 'You are my hero today.'"
Graves' family will receive the medal in his honor next month.
"They always knew their dad was a hero," Leavelle said. "Now everybody knows."
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PRESERVE MORE
OF YOUR FAMILYS HISTORY WHILE GETTING MORE FAMILY MEMBERS INTERESTED
Most
people, at least in the U.S., are interested in their family and its history, but
they generally arent interested in doing genealogical research. Some of us wonder why people who are
interested in history of their country or of the world arent interested in
family history. Some of us wonder
who is going to continue to research our family and its ancestry after we are
no longer able to do it, and we may wonder to whom we are going to leave all
our research material when we die (or will it just get thrown out?). This article addresses some of these
issues.
There
was an article in the July 13, 2015 Plus Edition of Eastmans Online Genealogy
Newsletter titled When Your Descendants Become Curious About Their Ancestors. You can see the start of that article here. This article points out that many
people are interested in information about their ancestors and their
lives. Dick Eastman asks should
you help your future genealogist descendant by making sure the information
about your life and the lives of your relatives will be available in the
future? He discusses types of
documents and various ways to preserve them and insure their availability.
Ancestry.com
is making more of the history surrounding families more readily available, and
has recently been announcing a series of new features that will help with that.
Another
aspect of this is the approach taken by blogger Roberta Estes in her
DNAeXplained blog. She has been
writing a series of articles about the details of her ancestors lives with
pictures of them and the places where they lived. You can go to her blog here,
enter the word ancestors (without the quotation marks) in the search box at
the top right of the page, and see many examples of the articles she has
written about her ancestors. Her
articles are much more detailed than most of us would create, but creating
detailed stories about your family and each of your ancestors, putting those
stories online, and sharing them with others, is a wonderful way to learn more
and interest other family members in their family history.
I am
considering trying to do some of what Roberta has been doing, and I would
encourage all of you to consider doing something similar. In addition to publishing online (as
Roberta has), creating a limited number of printed books via one of the many
services now available might by worth considering. By the way, to address one of the issues mentioned at the
start of this article, I am planning to give all of my genealogical material to
the New England Historical Genealogical Society in Boston, MA. I would be happy to have any other
suggestions anyone may have.
===============================================================
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
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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.