My Trails into the Past

Since before my research trip to Texas last May, I have been working on my mother’s family line involving N.H.O. Polly. He is her third great-grandfather. His daughter, Martha Jane, married George W. Lancaster. Part of the goal of the research trip was to locate more documents about him at local historical societies and archives.  Timeline Family trees online name NHO’s parents, but I am not yet convinced. So, what I am doing is writing up what I know into a report. I am also creating a timeline of the events in his life and the source citations to those documents. This timeline is mostly of deed transactions, tax lists, census enumerations, and court records. I have added some historical events to put the times into context, such as the start and end of the Civil War, the formation of new counties, and the births and marriages of his children. Adding the source citations has been tedious. Some of the documents were found years ago on microfilm at the Family History Library in Sa...

Creating a timeline is a great tool for a variety of genealogy research tasks. Timelines can help see holes in the research, can be used to analyze and correlate data, and can help distinguish between two same-named people. The best way I use timelines is to assist in my writing. My timelines include all the events of a person’s life and each is fully cited. I like to create my timelines in a word processing program to utilize the footnote feature. However, timelines can be created in a spreadsheet program or by using tables in a word processing program. Just be sure to have a column for your citations. When I’m ready to write about one of my ancestors or collateral lines, I take out the timeline. I have all the events in their life from birth to death recorded on the timeline, and the events I include come from census, directories, newspaper articles, military records, deeds, court records, and vital records. Any source that references them would be included. Writing becomes eas...

  Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:  It's Saturday Night again - Time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Randy Seaver of GeneaMusing has our assignment for today: 1)  We're all familiar with Timelines - date, location, event, etc. - for events in our lives.  This week, create a Place Line for your life, or for the life of one of your parents or grandparents - your choice! In that Place Line, tell us the location (address if possible), inclusive dates (if possible), and events. Consider topics like residence, schools, churches, employment, etc. Here's mine: Residences: * After my parents (William J Hork and Lela Nell Johnston) were married on 19 April 1953, they lived with his mother at 3418 Wren Avenue, Concord. I cannot show a photo from Google Maps because it’s tucked into one of those flag driveways and is behind another house. * They moved to 35 Wharf Drive in the housing tract called Shore Acres in West Pittsburg (now called Bay Point). Lela’s parents g...