Wiki Stats - End July 2024

The total number of pages in the Wiki (as at 1 August 2024) now stands at 14498 (previously 14418, 14306, 14207), a increase of 80 pages during this month.   Of the total, 2950 pages (was 2931, 2900, 2871) begin with a number and are most probably a date related gleaning.   We currently have 6506 wiki pages categorised as "People", of which 5979 begin with the letter "R".

Community members should log in to see more.

TRP Users

During July we have received eight new enquiries about membership of TRP, making it a relatively busy month. We ended the month with 570 user accounts registered in TRP, an increase of four over the previous month.   We had three users successfully activated their account during the past month and we welcome to TRP's community Chuck, Martin O, and Keith aka KDR. Keith is off to a flying start, having successfully created his AboutMe page and made a start on a page for his R*v*(s) grandparent, as explained on our page First Steps - Part 5

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.

Family Tree DNA - Family Trees

If you follow our Reeves DNA Project, you'll know we rely on the results from Y DNA tests with the company Family Tree DNA. See https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/reeves/about. You may also have an account at FtDNA if you have transferred your at-DNA results from elsewhere to FtDNA.

In mid July FtDNA announced that they were establishing a new collaboration with MyHeritage. Going forward, FtDNA users will be able to post a family tree at MyHeritage and link that MyH family tree to their FtDNA account. As part of that same announcement, FtDNA advised that from 09 September 2024, any FtDNA hosted family tree would become read only as they will be retiring their tree builder tool.

Now you may have read that email and/or the FtDNA blog and/or MyH blog and thought "my tree is fine, I'll just leave it as it is". (And I have to confess that was my initial reaction.) But new DNA matches, which may come next month, next year or even decades from now, may highlight unforeseen issues in your tree. But by that time you (or your heirs) won't be able to change that FtDNA hosted tree and you'll be adding to the vast amount of mis-information on the web concerning our R*v*(s) ancestors.

So we here at TRP suggest the following ....
(1) (Optionally) Sign in to your FtDNA account and grab a backup of your FtDNA tree. From the Family Tree tab, click on "Tree Mngt" and then click on the "Export Tree". Wait for the export to complete and then click on "Download Tree" and save the file downloaded to your device somewhere safe.
(2) Follow the appropriate guidance at FtDNA.   If you don't already have a MyH account you'll need to create one (which is free). The path you then take will depend on whether
        (2a) you choose to transfer your FtDNA tree to your MyH account,
        (2b) use an existing tree on your MyH account (if you already have one) or
        (2c) create a completely new tree in your MyH account
I chose option (2b) and it took only a couple of minutes to complete.

If you are not inclined to transfer your existing FtDNA tree to MyH, then we strongly recommend you consider DELETING your existing FtDNA tree. Why? To avoid it adding to that vast amount of R*v*(s) .....

We'll have a follow-on to this story next month....