Create a family history timeline

Timelines not only help to place our ancestors’ lives in context but they also ‘join up the dots’ to reveal unexpected connections.

Most genealogy software programs offer a pedigree view and a nuclear family view of the events in the lives of your ancestors. But your ancestors did not live in a vacuum. They shared life events with cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. Their lives were affected by local happenings and influenced by world events. Why was your grandmother named after her father’s sister? What caused your great-uncle to enlist in the armed forces so early in World War I? Why did your great-grandparents move from one city to another just after your grandfather was born? Why did your ancestors emigrate?

By arranging your genealogical data in chronological order and including world and local timelines, the answers to puzzling questions can suddenly seem to leap off the page. New relationships between people, places and events will reveal themselves. You will be looking at the lives of your ancestors as they lived them, surrounded by their extended families, the places in which they lived and the world around them.

In Family Tree September we’ve included a pull out and keep family history timeline for you to fill in with details of your ancestors’ lives, so you can get a better understanding of times gone by. We’ve added a selection of dates that would have affected your ancestors’ lives, from battles to Acts of Parliament and popular entertainment, but once you’ve added your own key dates you will see your family tree burst into life! Get your copy of September Family Tree here!