How to Create Life Timelines
After spending long hours gathering information on your family tree, you will want to find a way to share the information with others. Exhibiting one's genealogy can be confusing to those not involved in the intricate research that was necessary to gather all the intimate details of past generations. Timelines are an effective way to illustrate family relationships, important dates and fun stories. Sharing these timelines with others will foster a bond between yourself and those you share the information with as well as create dialogue about your ancestors.
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Instructions
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Create a Timeline
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Choose the ancestor you want to create a timeline for. Write the person's name at the top of the page.
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Create a table with one column for the date of an event and another column for the information pertaining to the date. The table can be as long or as short as you need. The idea is to capture as many of the person's life moments as you can. You may include places of residence per U.S. Census taken, dates of employment and the related employer, date of marriage, and spouse's name.
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Customize the timeline to include photos at specific points in time, excerpts from journals, family stories or a copy of a historical document. Although important to the timeline, dates are not the only information others will want to see. Including other information and documents will help the timeline come to life for yourself and others.
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Tips & Warnings
Although this article describes how to create a timeline on paper, the process can easily be transferred to a spreadsheet or word processing document with tables. The presentation can be as creative as you want it to be.
Remember to use maiden names when identifying women in a life timeline. Genealogists always refer to women by using their maiden name, not their married name.
