The Rives (Ryves) of Damory Court

Blandford Forum

In 1929, James Rives Childs of Lynchburg, Virginia published Reliques of the Rives (Ryves): being historical and genealogical notes of the ancient family Ryves of County Dorset. This book has been a mainstay for Reeves researchers; however, only a small portion of today’s Reeves’ families descend from this lineage. This Reeves (Rives) family is represented in Group 8 of the Reeves DNA Project which currently has twenty-five members with matching Y-DNA verifying their kinship.

Gravestone Inscription of
Robert Ryves

The Dorset family of Ryves descends from one Robert Ryves of Blandford County, Dorset, England who is the first of the name in England of whom there is record. He was born about 1490 and died 11 February 1551. Although the old church of Blandford Forum was destroyed by fire in 1731, an officer in the King’s Army in 1644 made notes describing the tomb of Robert Ryves. His grandson, Sir John Ryves, born 1536, in a petition stated that King Henry VIII had granted the premises of the manor of Milton County, Dorset to Robert Ryves in 1546.

Many family history books written and published long before the current level of access to historical documents contain abundant misinformation because they relied heavily on proximity as a source of family connections. Childs spend a great amount of time researching Reliques and the book appears to be factual except for a few errors that seem based upon data submitted by Reeves descendants, not the work of Childs himself.

At the time in 1929 when Reliques of the Rives (Ryves) was first published, Childs believed that the immigrant ancestor of this family was William Ryves who was a titheable in Surry County, Virginia in 1684 and 1695. After much further scrutiny and mounting inferential evidence in support of the theory, in 1957, James Rives Childs wrote an amendment to the book which was published in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography.

During the years after the first publiation, Childs felt that based upon his subsequent research along with additions and corrections shared by others that the immigrant was more likely Timothy Ryves, born 1625, the son of Timothy and Mary Ryves of Oxford. Timothy Rieve or Rives' estate was recorded in the Charles City County Order Book for 1687-1695. He was the father of George, Robert, John, and Timothy Rives, of Virginia.

Recently a Reeves colleague who descends from this family shared a link to this book that contains many interesting tidbits that may be of interest to other members of DNA Group 8 and others of the Rives or Reeves family descending from this lineage.

A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain By Bernard Burke · pub. 1900

Reliques of the Rives tree on ancestry.com

Sharland, Carolyn, and Gerald, Reeves DNA Group 8 cousins and collaborators have launched a new tree on ancestry.com. The Reliques of the Rives Group 8 DNA tree contains the lines of all Reeves males who have tested as members of Group 8 in the Reeves DNA project.

There are two ways you can approach the tree:

1. You can start at the top with Robert Ryves, the earliest documented ancestor of this line, and click a son. Each Ryves/Rives/Reeves who is in the direct line of one of the Group 8 Reeves will have this picture of the Ryves crest attached to his profile.


As you navigate through the tree, clicking on sons with that picture will lead you to someone who has tested as Reeves DNA Group 8 through his YDNA.

2. Another approach is to start with the pedigree of someone at the bottom of the tree. Here is an example using the line of K M Reaves. In the pedigree, you will see the Reeves crest displayed for each male in his direct line.

Although there are currently eight members of Group 8 DNA, only seven lines are included in this tree as the line of the eighth person remains unknown. We have included wives and siblings whenever they are available.

We have added citations and comments to many people in the tree and will add more as time permits. We have also used the inferred DNA feature available on ancestry.com to display the Haplogroup, E1b1b1a1, on each Reeves male profile page.

Maritime Records

Maritime records are a relatively unexplored source of information about Reeves/Rives who emigrated from England to the Virginia colony.

In his book The Ryves-Rives-Reaves Families of Europe and America, W Patrick Reaves includes the following tantalizing, but flawed, references to shipping records:

The Ryves, as indicated by English shipping records in the Virginia colonies, were associated with the following ships:

• "The Griffin"
• "Providence" (owned by Charles Ryves)

• "Sarah" (the name of Timothy's wife. This ship was inherited by Charles Ryves in 1689 according to VA Maritime archives record 5R 10081, reel 960, public records office class C24//1128, Chancery records dated 1689, lawsuit involving "The Sarah", Names of Persons involved were: Charles Ryves, George Ryves, Merchant of Virginia and Francis Parsons, Master) [NOTE: Sarah? We know that Timothy's widow was Mary from records in Charles City County Virginia, but Sarah may have been a previous wife]

• "The Exchange" (owned by Brune Ryves Jr of London and Portsmouth)

• "Charles" (owned and captained by Charles Ryves, a grandson of George Ryves of Woodstock, 1685-6, record SR12622, p 22, Va Maritime archives)

• "The Blandford"

"The Providence", owned by Charles Ryves of Woodstock, was operating in Virginia in port about three times a year from 1629 and into the 1700s.

Investigation of the above claims has uncovered several fallacies in assumptions made about these records.

The Brune Ryves Jr mentioned above was indeed the great-great-grandson of Robert Ryves of Dorset, but we don't yet know whether or not he actually owned the "Exchange".

However, the George Reeves and Charles Reeves involved with the ship "Sarah" are not of the DNA Group 8 (Robert Ryves) line as Patrick Reaves believed. They are two of the four sons of this George Reeves as documented on the Reeves Project Wiki. See:

George Reeves of Middlesex VA
Charles Reeves of Middlesex VA

Documentation for Charles Reeves also indicates that he was co-owner of the "Providence" referred to above and not Charles Ryves of Woodstock.

The claims about the ships "The Griffin", "The Exchange", "The Charles", and "The Blandford" still need to be pursued.

The invalid assumptions drawn from the records about George and Charles Reeves accentuates the importance of retaining the spelling of names as found in records. None of the records found for these two men and their brothers Thomas and Francis appear to have used the spelling "Ryves."

We should also be very careful about trusting claims made in genealogy books when primary sources are not provided or when they are transcribed inaccurately or incompletely.

Thanks to Beverly for her meticulous research on George, Charles, Thomas, and Francis Reeves of Middlesex, Virginia.

The Yellow Cross

Last year, I read this book:

The Yellow Cross: The Story of the Last Cathars Rebellion Against the Inquisition: 1290-1329
by Rene Weis

I was motivated to read The Yellow Cross because a Rives family figured prominently in the narrative. The Rives of Montaillou (in what is now southern France) were among those who resisted the Inquisition, thus burning at the stake for their beliefs.

Here is a brief review of the book that I wrote on Goodreads:

" Fascinating narrative derived from 700 year old depositions taken by the Inquisition in their relentless pursuit of heretics. Although the detail is at times overwhelming, the author succeeded in vividly depicting the lives of ordinary people of Languedoc during the middle ages, most of whom died for their rebellion against the Catholic church."

It has been suggested that the Ryves of Dorsetshire descended from the Rives of Languedoc, but nobody knows whether that is true or not. Nevertheless, I was entranced by the depiction of lives of ordinary (and real) people of hundreds of years ago.

The Yellow Cross is a challenging read but well worth the effort if you want to understand life in medieval Languedoc and learn a little about how an early Rives family lived.

Busting the Single Immigrant Myth

Did you know that hundreds of individuals with the surname Reeves (or related surname) were immigrants into the American colonies before the Revolution? Yes, in Virginia alone, one researcher documented seventy-eight Reeves who were transported to that colony before 1700, and that list was compiled from a relatively small set of sources.

The Reeves DNA project, with its 108 participants, has already identified at least fourteen genetically distinct lines of Reeves with another twenty-one participants who don’t match any of those fourteen groups.

So you see, the Reeves community form a pretty diverse group.

It is an unfortunate fact that research into the colonial origins of many Reeves families has been stymied by an unfounded assumption that there was but a single immigrant from whom most Southern Reeves descend. Many Reeves researchers, including a few book authors, have claimed descent from Robert Ryves, born 1490 in England, but genetic studies have shown that this is simply not possible. In addition, research has confirmed multiple lines of descent from multiple immigrants.

In future posts, we will identify some of the Reeves lines where more research is needed to identify family origins. In the meantime, don't let the spelling of the name limit your research. In some lines, all possible spellings appear, often in the same generation, and sometimes for the same person.