Happy Birthday TRP     or     Seven Years On

                  by Beverly Watson

It seems amazing to me that The Reeves Project is celebrating its 7^th birthday today (1^st April).   Every year Martin has to remind me that the inspiration for this project was on April Fools’ Day. The concept for the project was presented online to the Rootsweb Reeves Mailing List on 1 April 2010 and was immediately embraced by numerous Reeves’ researchers with Barry Reeves volunteering to locate suitable software and host the project on his servers.

Partnering The Reeves Project wiki database with the Reeves DNA Project at Family Tree DNA of which Barry is the coordinator, has been a great addition to traditional genealogical research. As more participants take the Y-DNA test, numerous mysteries have been solved and myths of family origins amended.

It’s been an exciting seven years for those of us who love Reeves family research and I’m looking forward to all the new discoveries we’ll make next year.

Wiki Stats - End March 2017

The total number of pages in the Wiki (as at 1 April 2017) now stands at 6832 (previously 6807, 6789, 6765) an increase of 25 pages during the month.     Of these 1328 pages (was 1324, 1322, 1322) begin with a number and are most probably a date related gleaning.     We currently have 2825 wiki pages categorised as "People", of which 2401 begin with the letter "R".

Community members should log in to see more.

TRP Users

We ended March 2017 with 284 user accounts registered in TRP, with six new members successfully activating their accounts during the month. We welcome David M, Richard R, Sandra J, Patricia R, Terry R and Martin MacL.
Richard and Martin are both off to a great start as both have already contributed their AboutMe page. It gives me particular pleasure to welcome David & Richard as they are both fellow Brits and both have a Reeves interest in the same part of southern England as I do; Hampshire and Wiltshire. Martin is our second member with an interest in Canada.

Reeves DNA Project Update

The first three months of 2017 have been quite different. During January we welcomed three new members to the project; Larry Reeves, Catherine Reeves and Yana Debbaneh.

February on the other hand saw six new members and a flurry of activity. We welcomed Judith Graves, Carroll Reeves, Dee Reichert (for Steve Mills), John B Reeves, Cheyenne (for Charles Williams), Pamela Ready, Robert L Reeves.

And then it’s gone relatively quiet in March, with (so far) one new member this month; Donna Wilson. The total project membership (as at 31 March) is 251.

During the quarter, we’ve seen new Y-DNA results for …

    Kit 597834 for Carroll Reeves     added to DNA Group 05
    Kit 607803 for John B Reeves      added to DNA Group 05
    Kit 620771 for Steve Mills        added to DNA Group 03
    Kit 648321 for Robert L Reeves    added to DNA Group 08
    Kit 626002 for Charles Williams   added to DNA Group 07
    Kit N202405 for Larry Reeves      added to DNA Group 10

It seems that Robert is a frequently occurring first given name in the Reeves fraternity. Our DNA Project has (so far) six of them, including two individuals named Robert L Reeves - an administrator’s nightmare! But we’re pleased to welcome you all!

Reeves Virtual WW1 Memorial

On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson went before a joint session of Congress1 , the ultimate result of which was the United States of America declaring war on Germany on 6 April 19172 .

We created the Virtual Reeves WW1 Memorial pages back in March 2014 and since then slow, steady progress has been made adding details of those with the Reeves surname who made the ultimate sacrifice and of their family members. It is noticeable however, that as yet none of the eight individuals named on the American Battle Monuments Commission's web site have yet been researched. I picked two of those names at random and a quick web search revealed names of other family members. Since I don't have access to US focused records, I can't take their research any further. If you're at a brick wall with your Reeves research and would like a new challenge or just want to broaden your experience by using different types of historical records, why not volunteer to research and document one of these individuals for TRP? Please reach out to your Mentor Team to confirm your interest to avoid any duplication of effort.