Week 34: Timeline (52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks)

Amy Johnson Crow’s Week 34's theme is "Timeline." Timelines are a great research tool. What discovery have you made after putting together an ancestor's timeline? Have you thought about how everyday life changed for an ancestor during his or her life? Click here to check out all of the themes for 2022.

A Timeline should start with the birth date of your desired person and then go forward to events in their lives such as, employment, military service, marriage date, children’s births and deaths and then their own death.

My preferred genealogy software program, Family Tree Maker 2019 has a timeline report. If I select Publish, Person Reports there is Timeline Report. This report shows all the events for a single person. However, what can be confusing is that the report starts with the births of older siblings, if the report person wasn’t the first born in the family. However, it didn’t show the deaths of those older siblings because they died before my report person was born. Siblings that died after the person was born, was shown. However, only siblings that died before the report person’s death. 

Thus, the time line basically shows events surrounding the report person’s life. It will show births of siblings and spouses even if they occurred before the report person’s birth.  However, it will not show deaths of siblings before their birth or deaths of siblings, parents, spouses, children after the report person’s death.

It will show their marriage, their siblings’ marriages, their siblings’ births and deaths, their children’s births and deaths, as long as it occurred during their lifetime. 

Another place that has facts for a person in chronological order is under the Person Tab. If you select the Facts view, the person’s individual facts will appear in date order. This is one of the reasons I created a “Census” fact. I can see at a glance if I found them in a census record during their lifetime. This view allows me to quickly see if I have other census records that I need to search for. Some people actually use the residence fact for recording census information. However, I like to reserve that fact for city directories, or for where they were living when one of their children were born. 

As Amy said in the introduction, “Timelines are a great research tool.” Timelines allow you to put your ancestor in chronological time and place to better understand his/her movements and connections to people and locations. Timelines reveal gaps in your research where more information about your ancestor is needed. They can help point you to where to look for vital records. If you have big gaps in the person’s timeline, you might want to search out more information to see what they were doing. Did they have additional children, did they move away and then come back? So, if you are struggling with a person, try creating a timeline to see what you are missing.

Just remember to have fun and Just do Genealogy!