Saturday, September 14, 2019

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Make a Timeline Report for an Ancestor

From Randy over at Genea-Musings: 



it's Saturday Night - 
time for more Genealogy Fun!!!


 Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1) Have you created a Timeline for one of your ancestors using a genealogy software program (e.g., Family Tree Maker, RootsMagic, Legacy, Reunion, etc.) or an online family tree (e.g., Ancestry Member Tree, FamilySearch Family Tree, Geni, MyHeritage, etc.), or in a spreadsheet (e.g., Excel)?

2)  If not, try to create a timeline using the program/website of your choice.  If so, create another one for the ancestor of your choice!

3)  Show us your Timeline creation, and tell us how you did it.  Which program/website, the process you used, and how you captured the images to display your timeline.

4)  Share your Timeline creation on your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or on Facebook.

Here's mine:

My genealogy software of choice is Family Tree Maker 2017.  This program has a Timeline Report, which I used for this challenge.  I went to the "Publish" tab,  then "Person Reports" under "Publication Types" and "Charts & Reports," then chose the "Timeline Report."  You can include or exclude items, as desired, such as "Include Family Events" or "Include Historical Events."  For this example, I used the default settings which were "Include event icons" and "Include family events:"  "Include spouses' birth" and "Include sibling facts."

Here is the report I generated for my 3rd great-grandfather, Francis Bryant Drake (1806-1875).  (I've been knee-deep in Drake research the last few weeks!)  


 I didn't see a way to include Sources in my report.  Reports are one aspect of Family Tree Maker that I believe need a lot of improvement and added flexibility.  There should be more ways to drill down and get the information you want.  One I really, really need is a report by cemetery so that when I visit an area, I can view who is buried in a particular cemetery.  But I have not found a way to do this.

For this report, I tried adding in historical events, but it listed events that happened before my ancestor was born.  I couldn't find a way to omit those.  

Overall, I definitely see the value in a timeline report, but FTM has a long way to go to improve the flexibility of their reports.  

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