Saturday, September 14, 2019

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Make a Timeline Report for an Ancestor

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It's Saturday Night again - 

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!


Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!):


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.

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 3rd great-grandmother, Sophia (Buck) (Brigham) (Newton) Stone (1797-1882):

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.  Also, it extends over several screens.

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, click on "Mark group" and select "Family of selected person," then check the "Include place for each event" and click on "Generate Report."

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


 I also requested "Sources" in an Endnote format:


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

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3 comments:

Dorene from Ohio said...

Randy - Here is my post:

http://graveyardrabbitofsanduskybay.blogspot.com/2019/09/very-simple-timeline-for-my-mother.html

nancy said...

To share with family members, last week I created this timeline-and-more manually, for my blog. Have already had some great discussions triggered by including below timeline, a list of records not found, and any still unanswered questions:

https://schlegelstorckroots.blogspot.com/2019/09/gitel-schwartz-tesser-family-in-ny.html

Liz said...

Here's mine:

https://gatapleytree.blogspot.com/2019/09/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-make.html