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.

Information on how to be removed from the subscription list is at the end of this bulletin. If you received this bulletin directly, then you are already subscribed. If you received it from a friend and want to subscribe, send an email message with your full name to ken.graves@gravesfa.org.

Click on these links to visit the GFA website and our Facebook page.

===============================================================

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 Freedmen’s 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 Family’s 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. We’ll 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, 4,726^th 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 14,182^nd 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
Åland	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

===============================================================

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 isn’t 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.

===============================================================

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. Mary’s 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)

===============================================================

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

===============================================================

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 FREEDMEN’S BUREAU RECORDS RELEASED

Another resource for tracing African-American ancestry has just been announced. A June 19 article in Eastman’s 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.

===============================================================

SLAVERY IN BRITISH COLONIES

SLAVERY RECORDS IN THE CARIBBEAN

Roberta Estes in her DNAeXplained blog has written an article titled “Britain’s 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 Roberta’s 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.”

===============================================================

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 Jimmy’s 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, Jimmy’s 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. Kennedy’s 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."

===============================================================

PRESERVE MORE OF YOUR FAMILY’S HISTORY WHILE GETTING MORE FAMILY MEMBERS INTERESTED

Most people, at least in the U.S., are interested in their family and it’s history, but they generally aren’t interested in doing genealogical research. Some of us wonder why people who are interested in history of their country or of the world aren’t 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 Eastman’s 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 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.