5 Steps to Research

Frank Beacon: Paralleling Family Lines

One of the most common ways to think about family lines is via a pedigree chart. Those handy forms help us trace our ancestry back through the generations, maintaining a certain perspective of similar generations -- parents and children. As our fingers follow the lines on the chart we visualize the progress from one generation to another, counting the steps between ourselves and our great-great-great grandparents.

You could also draw a "family line" on a map. In pencil or pen you could literally trace your family's geographic history in a line across the paper, from California to Indiana to Kentucky to South Carolina to Pennsylvania to Scotland. As your finger follows the line your mind may see the fields of the gold rush, the Ohio River Valley, Kentucky hills, and Scottish lowlands.

Our family lines have another dimension as well. The one called by some the fourth dimension: Time.

Just as your geographic family line winds through prairies, mountains and oceans on a map, your family timeline weaves in and out of the large and small daily events of history. Wars, economic turmoil, political restructuring and climate changes affected your family history as much as the migratory paths they followed.

Keeping track of the historical events during your ancestors' lives is as important as knowing the geographic area in which they lived. It is impossible to understand anyone without understanding the culture in which they lived.

The first timeline you should use is a truly historical one. A timeline that includes major events in the areas of politics, literature, religion, science, and transportation.

You should become familiar with both the broad outlines of history and the specifics that would have affected your own forebears. Consider not just the separate developments, but how they affected each other (and your family).

As you compare your family's timeline against a broader historical timeline remember that some developments may be more clear to us than they were to those who lived at the time, and vice versa. For example, computers and modems seem almost inseparable to us today, but until the advent of the commercial Internet their marriage was by no means a certainty.

The second type of timeline you can use is what might be termed a "standard life events" timeline. You might think of this like a six-inch ruler: a small tool with markings on one side that you can use to measure small surfaces.

The "standard life events" would begin with birth. About 12 to 15 years later might be such pre-adult events as church confirmation, apprenticeship, or secondary schooling. Birth plus 20 or 25 years might show military service, adult employment, and marriage. Child-bearing years run around 20 to 40 years after birth. Also later in life: second marriage (and a new family), retirement, new career, and of course, death.

You can compare the events on this small timeline against the timeline of family events shown on a pedigree chart or family group record to see how your representation of the family holds up. You can compare it to a historical timeline to see which events were more likely to affect the life of an individual ancestor. For example, if an ancestor was about 20 at the time of a local war you should look for information in military records -- or for a quick exit to another country to avoid military service.

No one is going to fit any timeline perfectly, because events affect each of us just a little differently. But comparing what you already know about one of your ancestors to the personal and cultural events of his or her day will help you more fully understand what his or her life was like, and why it turned out the way it did.

Frank Beacon

A Timeline of Scandinavian History