Happy Thirteenth Birthday to TRP
by BeverlyIt’s that time of year again – April Fool’s Day and the birthday of The Reeves Project. As Martin reminded me, TRP has now become a teenager.
For those of you who are new to The Reeves Project, the concept for the project was presented online to the Rootsweb Reeves Mailing List on 1 April 2010 which is, sadly, no longer available (but a copy of that original message has been recently added to TRP page TRP_News_2010_04). The idea of sharing our research as well as our DNA results was immediately embraced by numerous Reeves’ descendants and Barry Reeves volunteered to locate suitable software and host the project on his servers.
Over the course of the last 13 years, TRP has partnered with The Reeves DNA Project at Family Tree DNA of which Barry is the coordinator. This has been a great addition to traditional genealogical research. As more participants take the Y-DNA test, we have been able to share documented Reeves’ family information. Y-DNA, in addition to serious, well documented research, has solved numerous mysteries and many incorrect family origin myths have been disproved, amending and sharing more credible family histories.
Happy Birthday TRP and once again, thank you Barry for making this great resource possible.
Wiki Stats - End March 2023
The total number of pages in the Wiki (as at 1 April 2023) now stands at 13031 (previously 12977, 12911, 12855), an increase of 54 pages during the month. Of the total, 2639 pages (was 2625, 2608, 2598) begin with a number and are most probably a date related gleaning. We currently have 5829 wiki pages categorised as "People", of which 5303 begin with the letter "R".Community members should log in to see more.
The chart below shows our growth over the past thirteen years. In the twelve months since TRP's last birthday, we've collectively added over 1080 pages of information relating to our R*v*(s) ancestors and their families.
The Reeves Project has also welcomed 27 new members over the same period of time, but sadly only a very few of you have become active contributors. If each of you, our 500+ users, contributed just one new page a month, which isn't such a huge request, TRP would be growing at around 6000 pages per year. In turn I'm sure that would attract more cousins to come forward and help grow our collective knowledge and break down some of those brick walls we all have in a R*v*(s) family trees.
TRP Users
During March we have received six new enquiries about membership of TRP. We ended the month with 537 user accounts registered in TRP, an increase of 4 over the month. We had just two users successfully activated their account during the past month and we welcome to TRP Scott and Tom to our community. Neither has yet created an AboutMe page for themself (as described in our First Steps - Part 2) to give the rest of our community an insight into their R*v*(s) interest,. I hope they will do do soon.If you are having issues activating your account or have simply lost interest, please do let us know. Please contact New User Admin by sending an email to TRP123 (at) TheReevesProject (dot) org if you're stuck and need help or have subsequently decided you don't want to join our community. If you are not yet a member and would like to contribute to our community, please see our About Us page to find out a little more about TRP and then please complete our Join Us form to start the membership enrolment process.
Whether you joined TRP recently or a while ago, if you have yet to do so, please set a meaningful name for yourself as described in First Steps - Part 1. It isn't difficult and only takes a couple of minutes to do. If it helps, think of it as a (small) name label badge; so your first name plus the surname by which you are presently known (or at least the surname initial) would generally be a good choice. You'll find links to the remainder of the our six part First Steps as part of the FAQ - First Steps. Those same First Steps are also a great refresher for anybody returning to The Reeves Project after a period away
Another Milestone - 13,000th Wiki Page
Not only are we celebrating TRP's 13th birthday. but on 20 February the 13,000th page was added to our wiki. This milestone was reached when Martin created a page ready to hold the Reeves DNA Project Update for 1q 2023. The page was immediately hidden from public gaze whilst the admins evolved the content and only revealed on 1 April. This milestone comes eleven months and a day after we added the 12,000th Wiki Page during April 2022.Reeves DNA Project Update
Unlike the previous two quarters, we've seen some significant activity during the past quarter, both in terms of membership and DNA results.We had nine new members joining the Reeves DNA Project at FtDNA and the total current membership is now 425 (as of 25 March 2023).
During January we welcomed William. February was much busier and we welcomed Donald, Elizabeth, Clayton, Shaun and Floyd. So far in March we're pleased to welcome Michael_R, Michael_H and Robert.
Through the past quarter we've received the results for seven new Y-DNA members, with one additional set of results for a new member currently being processed by FtDNA
Kit 836428 for WW presently ungrouped
Kit 995250 for DR DNA Group 03
Kit 995538 for RR DNA Group 03
Kit AM13132 for CW presently ungrouped
Kit B227983 for SC DNA Group 06b
Kit B823085 for MH DNA Group 03
Kit B855196 for Floyd Dowell DNA Group XXWe are grateful to Floyd who has kindly completed our DNA Donor Permission e-mail and also confirmed his most recent R*V*(s) ancestor was female.. We would encourage all new Y-DNA donors or their representatives to make contact and allow us to identify them within TRP.Unlike some one name DNA studies, the Reeves DNA Project is happy to welcome all those with an interest in the Reeves surname (and its variants), regardless of their gender or their surname. For those who have taken a Y-DNA test, if your results match one of our pre-existing Groups, we will automatically link your kit with that group. All other Y-DNA test results remain in the ungrouped pool.
However, keeping the ungrouped pool free of Y-DNA results we know should never expect a Reeves Y-DNA match makes life much easier for both the admins and those project members hoping to find a Reeves Y-DNA match. If your connection to the R*v*(s) surname is from a female ancestor and you have taken a Y-DNA test, please take a minute to read DNA Group XX's home page within TRP.
During the past quarter we've seen one notifications for new Family Finder results (from a new at-DNA Donor) and and one notification of the results from a new mt-DNA donor.
If you missed last quarter's summary the DNA Project Update for 4q2022 is available here.