The Start of The Reeves Project
On 1st April 2010 Beverly posted an e-mail entitled "Making Sense or our Reeves Families" to the Reeves List at Rootsweb that was the catalyst in the creation of The Reeves Project. An archived copy of that message can be found at https://mlarchives.rootsweb.com/listindexes/emails?listname=reeves&thread=1511331 (accessed 15 March 2021).- This news page retrospectively updated in May 2015. Previously it had been a blank structure page.
- Updated in March 2020 to replace reference to http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/REEVES/2010-04/1270131428| at the former Rootwebs archive with a link to the newer hyperkitty archive at [https://lists.rootsweb.com/hyperkitty/list/reeves.rootsweb.com/thread/1511331/].
- Updated again in March 2021 to add latest incarnation of the url to directly access the Rootweb posting at https://mlarchives.rootsweb.com/listindexes/emails?listname=reeves&thread=1511331
- Updated in March 2023, just prior to Ancestry shutting down the Rootsweb Mailing Lists on April 6, 2023 to include the text of original thread
[REEVES] Making Sense of our Reeves Families
(from Beverly Watson 01 April 2010 at 03h24)
I’ve been thinking…there is a tremendous amount of Reeves family knowledge among the listers here and I’ve been trying to think of a way we could begin to sort them all out geographically. Tommie is extremely knowledgeable about South Carolina Reeves along with several other areas, Richard for Georgia (he’s also collecting data for all Reeves by state), Billy in Tennessee and parts of North Carolina, and I’m sure there are many others that I haven’t corresponded with. It might save all of us time, for instance - by knowing that the Reeves who migrated into Carroll County, Mississippi before 1850 descend from my William Reeves of Wake County NC as were the Reeves who migrated into Gibson, Tennessee about the same time. I’m sure that many of you listers know where other descendants of your ancestors migrated.
Virginia and North Carolina would probably be the most difficult but I believe most of us have become fairly knowledgeable about the areas where our families originated and have a general knowledge of Reeves in the surrounding counties.
Can anyone think of a way we could share our combined knowledge by state and county? Since it isn’t technically possible to post a map on this list, I’m not sure how we could do it, but I feel that we could really make sense of a lot of these families if we can find a way to share our knowledge geographically. What I am suggesting would involve only information from historical sources, not from published histories or online family trees which could be subject to research errors.
Any opinions? Maybe just create a database by state and then post the information on the list? It may not be at all feasible but I thought I’d see what the rest of you thought.
Beverly
Re: [REEVES] Making Sense of our Reeves Families
(reply from Barry Reeves 01 April 2010 at 04h58)
Beverly,
That's a very good idea. Seems like some of us discussed something similar to this a while back, but never did anything about it. It shouldn't be too complicated to put a website with a database like that together. I have some time this week to work on it, but I would like some input from some of the other listers.
Specifically, what type of information do we think would be important to include in such a database. Using my line as an example, do we want to keep it basic and say that Jennings Reeves moved from Gaston County, NC to Gibson County, TN in 1846? Or do we want to take it a step further by documenting our ancestors' location at given points in time such as every ten years based on the U.S. Census. Then link each of the census records together to show their migration from one place to another.
I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts on this. This could be a very useful database for everyone.
Barry Reeves