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Saturday, November 11, 2017

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Make an Ancestor's Timeline

It's Saturday Night - 
time for more Genealogy Fun! 



Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to:



1) Have you created a Timeline for one of your ancestors using a genealogy software program (e.g., Family Tree Maker, RootsMagic, Legacy, Reunion, etc.) or an online family Tree (e.g., Ancestry Member Tree, FamilySearch Family Tree, Geni, MyHeritage, etc.), or in a spreadsheet (e.g., Excel)?

2)  If not, try to create a timeline using the program/website of your choice.  If so, create another one for the ancestor of your choice!

3)  Show us your Timeline creation, and tell us how you did it.  Which program/website, the process you used, and how you captured the images to display your timeline.

4)  Share your Timeline creation on your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook or Google+.


Here's mine:

I chose to use the RootsMagic 7 genealogy software program, which has both a Timeline View and a Timeline Report.

Here is the "Timeline View" format in RootsMagic 7 for my grandfather, Lyle Lawrence Carringer (1891-1976):


The "Timeline View" for a person has columns for "Age," "Facts," "Date," "Details," "place" and icons for Notes, Sources, and Media (the green check marks)   The "Timeline View" added the immediate family members (parents, siblings, spouses, children) to the list without my having to request it (you can select the options in the "Options" button on the "Timeline View" menu).  I really like this view, but, other than using a screen capture like above, I could not find a way to print out this list in color 

The second option to produce a Timeline is to use the Reports menu > "Lists" item > "Timeline (chronology)" item, and select "Individual Timeline list," select a person from the "Select others to include in timeline," select the person, and check the "Include place for each event" and click on "Generate Report."

Here are the three pages for the Timeline (captured as images using the Windows Snipping Tool):

I also requested "Sources" in an Endnote format:

Note that the Timeline doesn't include events for other family members.  I could use the "Group timeline list" and add events for parents, siblings, spouses and children to the list.  That ran 11 pages.

The "Timeline (chronology)" report is very plain - but it is very useful.  I would like to see a little more information about the relationships - for instance, identify the family persons as son, daughter, wife, father, mother, brother, sister, etc.  I would also like to see this report formatted with some graphics and color so it would be more visual.

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Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post.  Share it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest using the icons below.  Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

5 comments:

  1. I created my timeline using Legacy Family Tree
    https://loiswillis.blog/2017/11/12/sunday-afternoon-genealogy-fun-make-an-ancestors-timeline/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Here's my timeline using Legacy.
    https://carolinagirlgenealogy.blogspot.com/2017/11/randy-seavers-saturday-night-genealogy_11.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. I use RootsMagic like Randy.
    https://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com/2017/11/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-make.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. As a RootsMagic 7 newbie, I followed your directions and created a timeline for a 2d great uncle--which, not surprisingly, revealed gaps for me to fill in with more research! Thanks for your idea to do this. Mine timeline is here: http://climbingmyfamilytree.blogspot.com/2017/11/ancestor-timeline-reveals-gaps-gasp.html

    ReplyDelete