This morning, I went to the Indiana Historical Society in downtown Indianapolis and attended a talk about family history timelines presented by Betty L. Warren, one of the Historical Society's professional genealogy researchers. She showed us several timelines and personal chronologies that she had set up for her family and one of her client's families (actually, the current governor of Indiana). It was very helpful to see a couple of different formats for timelines. She even showed us a way to incorporate some basic source citations into the timelines themselves. I also really like how she showed us how to visualize overlap among family members of different generations using simple colored posterboard:
Sample timelines made by Betty L. Warren.
To summarize her main points, timelines are great for genealogy research because:
1.) They allow you to visualize an ancestor's major life events all at once. Very helpful for making sure that dates make sense (for example, if a U.S. land grant happened before the person's immigration date, you know something is wrong there).
2.) Timelines enable you to see the gaps in your data. So, timelines themselves are a very helpful research tool that should be used even when you don't have a lot of life 'events' to put into the timeline.
3.) Placing a historical timeline next to a personal timeline can help you understand WHY your ancestor immigrated, or moved, or joined the military, or contracted cholera, etc.
4.) Making timelines, either on poster board or on a computer, is inexpensive. Most genealogy software these days does have the ability to construct timelines for you, but you don't NEED those programs to do it. She showed us a simple way to use Microsoft Word to construct a basic timeline.
5.) Timelines are great ways to get kids involved in family history research. My children are still too young to understand many genealogical concepts, like generations and historical context, BUT they DO understand life events, like being born, going to school, getting married, having children, etc. I can make a timeline for my great-grandmother and visually show them that she did all of these things, even if they don't yet 'get' the scope of how long ago these things occurred.
Betty L. Warren's contact information can be found on this web page.
Cyndi's List also has a great collection of websites that can help you create family history timelines and world history timelines.
1.) They allow you to visualize an ancestor's major life events all at once. Very helpful for making sure that dates make sense (for example, if a U.S. land grant happened before the person's immigration date, you know something is wrong there).
2.) Timelines enable you to see the gaps in your data. So, timelines themselves are a very helpful research tool that should be used even when you don't have a lot of life 'events' to put into the timeline.
3.) Placing a historical timeline next to a personal timeline can help you understand WHY your ancestor immigrated, or moved, or joined the military, or contracted cholera, etc.
4.) Making timelines, either on poster board or on a computer, is inexpensive. Most genealogy software these days does have the ability to construct timelines for you, but you don't NEED those programs to do it. She showed us a simple way to use Microsoft Word to construct a basic timeline.
5.) Timelines are great ways to get kids involved in family history research. My children are still too young to understand many genealogical concepts, like generations and historical context, BUT they DO understand life events, like being born, going to school, getting married, having children, etc. I can make a timeline for my great-grandmother and visually show them that she did all of these things, even if they don't yet 'get' the scope of how long ago these things occurred.
Betty L. Warren's contact information can be found on this web page.
Cyndi's List also has a great collection of websites that can help you create family history timelines and world history timelines.
