The Family History Compass
  Juliana Smith – 9/10/2001

The Multi-Functional Timeline

My house has become overrun with calendars lately. I have my work calendar where I keep track of upcoming projects, deadlines, conferences, and the like; my husband's work calendar with much of the same; my daughter's school calendar which tells me when I have to be room mom, or have her ready for a field trip or some other activity; a bill paying calendar; family calendars which mark upcoming birthday parties, weddings, trips to visit family, when to expect company, etc.—you get the idea. Independently they all contain important dates that we need to reference, but viewed separately it can be difficult to see exactly how much chaos the impending weeks may bring.

In order to keep our sanity (somewhat), we have created a multi- purpose calendar where we log all of the information from the many calendars. This way I don't have to clone myself because I have volunteered to help at school on days when I'll be away at a conference, or have invited family or friends over to visit on a day we have two birthday parties to attend. (I can just picture that— "Help yourselves to whatever's in the fridge. We'll be back in a few hours and we'll have at least fifteen minutes to chat before we have to head out for party No.2. In the meantime, ask the dog and cats to show you their new tricks.")

The multi-purpose calendar also gives us the big picture of what the upcoming weeks look like and whether or not I'm going to need to be sedated by the time the weekend comes around.

We may find ourselves running into similar problems with our family history data. We have a birth record here, a few censuses and directory entries, a marriage record, record of a child's baptism, and maybe a death or cemetery record. Viewed separately, they're just a bunch of dates, but when we put them together with other dates, both in our family history and even in history as a whole, we start to see something great coming together—our ancestor's life story. In fact, the timeline of an ancestor can form the framework for a biographical sketch that can be later used in compiling a family history.

The Where, The When, The How
So let's get down to the nitty-gritty here. How do we construct a timeline for an ancestor? There are any number of ways that you can construct a timeline and there are even programs that will help you to do so. Legacy will chart your ancestors' lifespan, and a new Genelines add-on will help plot your ancestors life against historical events or alone, in a variety of charts. (See Dick Eastman's article from last week at: http://www.ancestry.com/library/view/columns/eastman/4523.asp) The Master Genealogist creates a timeline automatically as you enter in the records you have found in your research and the Individual Detail Report lists events (or "tags" as they are referred to in the program) chronologically.

These are great features and I'm sure there are other programs with comparable abilities, but I also like to create my own reports using my basic word processing and/or spreadsheet programs. The main advantage to this is that you have to really look at the records you have collected and analyze what you are including. I have found many overlooked clues this way. It also allows me a lot of flexibility as far as the format, using different fonts that help key information stand out, footnoting, sorting, etc.

The first step is to gather all the information possible on a particular ancestor and his family. (I like to use an whole family approach to this, because it is possible to find information on siblings' records that may not be available on direct ancestors.) Whenever I create a timeline, I begin with the parents and start at the beginning with their birth, moving forward. I include the date (usually in bold at the top), the event or record (including an abstract when possible), and how I obtained that information (record source or how I estimated it).

Below are a few sample entries from one of my timelines:

— ca. 1826
Kelly, Elizabeth—born
(Estimated from 1880 US Census data)

—ca. 1845-1848
Catherine Kelly gives birth to Emma R. Tobin
(1850 Rochester, NY Federal Census M432-530 shows her as 3 - b. 1846- 7?
[Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum, pages 80-81] 1860 Rochester, NY Federal Census shows her as 12 - b. 1847-8? [M653- 783] Marriage record 29 February 1879 to Emile Chouannierre lists her as 29 years old - b. 1849-50 [State of NY, City of Brooklyn, pg 296])

—1880 Census, Brooklyn, Kings Co., NY (3 June 1880)
Kelly, Elizabeth, White, Female, 54, boarder (Hotel Branting, Madison Ave/58th St.), Single, NY, Ireland, Ireland
Kelly, James, White, Male, Age 65, Married, At home, Ireland, Ireland, Ireland
(E.D. 102, Page 12, S.D. 2, NARA film T9-846, 684D, Copy of image from Ancestry.com at C:\Our Family History\Kelly\James)

—1883
Kelly, Elizabeth died
(From "The Sisters of Charity of New York, 1809-1959, Vol. III" by Sister Marie de Lourdes Walsh (New York City: Fordham University Press)
Chapter 11, pages 225-226: ... Meanwhile the home had been incorporated in 1870 under the legal title of St. Joseph's Home for the Aged, with the following Board of Managers:
Mother Mary Jerome Ely
Sister Mary Regina Lawless
Sister Ann Borromeo Obermeyer
Sister Mary Francis Wallace
Sister Maria Dodge
Sister Francis Borgia Taylor
Miss Elizabeth Kelly
Mrs. Daniel Devlin
… Miss Kelly continued on the Board until her death in 1883…)
[Look for Elizabeth Kelly death record or probate around 1883.]

— 1888-1889 Directory listing
James Kelly, 155 Huntington, Brooklyn, NY, 1888-1889
("Lain's" Directory—Ancestry.com database, http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/inddbs/4710.htm)
[Look for James Kelly in subsequent directories. Estimated that he died betw. 1890 and 1900 from directories and 1900 US Census.]

While this one was done in a word processor, it could easily have been entered in a spreadsheet, too. This allows you to sort the data in various ways, which is particularly handy when the timeline includes a number of individuals. I also like to color code individuals so it is easy to follow each person.

Don't worry if you don't have too much information to start with. On some of the families I have done, I have started with as little as one or two entries. But as I study each record, I usually can find more entries to add from the various information bits that I have. (Ex: With a census entry, I can estimate date of birth. Birth dates and locations can help to estimate immigration dates for immigrant ancestors.) In addition, as you progress and find more data, you can fill in more and more and word processors and spreadsheets allow for easy insertion of new data.

The timeline also allows me to include ideas for further research in appropriate places. (I like to put these "action items" in red.)

Basis of a Biography
A few weeks ago we ran a few Quick Tips regarding the use of a datebook or calendar to record the birth dates and other life events in our ancestors' lives. When the birth date of an ancestor came up, one reader then proceeded to create a "mini-biography" of that person. (http://www.ancestry.com/library/view/news/tip/4506.asp)

I loved this idea and my goal is, using the timelines I have created as a basis to create the biographical sketches of each ancestor. The hard part will be combining this ancestral birth date calendar with our already over-crowded multi-purpose calendar. But since I have a bit of a head start with timelines created for most of my ancestors, this just might work!


Juliana Smith is the editor of the Ancestry Daily News and author of The Ancestry Family Historian's Address Book. She has written for Ancestry Magazine and Genealogical Computing. Juliana can be reached by e-mail at: mailto:editor@ancestry-inc.com, but regrets that she is unable to assist with personal research.

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