Family History Timelines
When a family historian has exhausted all the obvious sources of information, establishing a timeline may be a helpful exercise in locating further information.
A family history timeline is a list or map of events in an ancestor’s life, which includes:
- Dates and places of birth, marriage and death
- When and where children were born
- Dates and places where an ancestor lived
- Immigration dates and ports of departure and arrival
- Military service
- Occupations
- When and where they were witnesses or were mentioned in legal documents
Once the ancestor’s life details are recorded on the timeline, add relevant historical events from the town, county, state, country and world. The events will obviously vary with different eras and from place to place, but include events like:
- A war that might have affected the family
- Economic events, such as a depression
- Natural events, such as the Irish Potato Famine or the 1816 “Year Without a Summer”
- Social and legal trends in the area, such as early Australian land grants or enclosures and clearances in the British Isles
- Religious events, such as particular religious splits and persecution
With a timeline that encompasses the ancestor’s life as well as the local and world events surrounding them, it’s time to ask questions:
- Was a male ancestor aged between 15 and 60 during war years?
- Do any censuses, population lists, musters or electoral rolls exist for the time and place they lived?
- Do town or city directories exist for the time an ancestor lived in a particular place?
- Was there a local newspaper at that time?
- What religion were they? What local church might they have attended? In what archive might those records be found?
- Did they ever own their home or farm? Look for land records.
- If immigrants, what was happening in their homeland before or during the time they left? Could that have been a factor in their emigrating? Did others from the family emigrate earlier?
Timelines are good for stimulating creative thinking, which leads to questions and possible research pathways to expand on your family history. The added advantage is that by looking for ways to find additional information, you will find out more details about how your ancestors lived and how local and world events affected them.