Have you used timelines in your genealogy research? If so, did you create them by hand or let your genealogy software do the work for you.
I have to admit that I rarely use timelines. Intead, I just look at a persons profile, which RootsMagic 9 arranges like an individual timeline.
If I wanted a more formal report, I could use the TImeline List report.
That report can be exported to Excel or saved as a Word document. Because I checked “Include places” the places are shown after the event name.
In my research of the descendants of Alexander and Margaret (McElwee) Crawford, I’m running into a lot of burned courthouses.To get past this roadblock, I would like to know the various places the descendants lived and when. Thus, I need a timeline!
While I could print a simple timeline for Alexander, it will not include the places where his children and grandchildren lived. To add them to the timeline, I need to use the “People to Include” option. Clicking on the > on the right opens box with a drop down menu.
That box allows me to include everyone (not feasible in my large file), select from a list or use a group. Since I have color coded Alexander and his descendants and have a group for that color coding, I can use that group.
Using the group in combination with Alexander creates a time line for the members of the group. BUT, this timeline is only for events that happened during Alexander’s life. Thus, it ends when Alexander dies and is buried.
Having the report end at 1823 is an issue since I want to know where his descendants lived thru 1900. To get around this issue, I created a person named, Extended Timeline. I then set the birth and death dates for this person to be beyond my needs for the timeline report. I used 1760 (likely before Alexander’s birth) and 1940 (to include great-grandchildren’s events). I then selected my Extended TImeline person and my Color Coding group for the report.
When I generated that report, I got 15 pages of events. Because my group included the spouses, my timeline report includes the dates and places where the spouses were born. To only have the direct descendants, I need a new group. Thus, I created a group selecting Alexander Crawford and then marking his descendants for 4 generations.
Once this new group was created, I could go back to the Timeline report using my Extended Timeline person and my ‘Alexander Direct line – 4 gen’ group.
After turning off the Endnotes, I generated the report and saved it as an Excel file. This created a spreadsheet with the age, date and event information. (NOTE: The age is in relation to my Extended Timeline person and thus is ‘junk’ information.)
Now, I have all of the information I need – but it is in one column instead of being split out into event and place columns. But this is Excel and I can split that information out. (Split Text …)
When I clicked on Text to Columns in the menu bar, it opened the wizard. The wizard uses the TAB as a default delimiter. However, my column uses a semicolon to separate the event from the place and uses a comma to separate the county from the state. Thus, I need to check all three delimeters. The data preview shows how the data will be split.
When I click the NEXT button, it gives me the option of configuring each column. Since I’m only working with text, I can skip this screen and click FINISH. [NOTE: the date format is tricky.]
Because some of the places included a city or township while other places begain with the county, the place columns don’t line up as desired. To use the ‘delete cells’ and ‘insert cells’ feature, I had to copy the data into a new spreadsheet. Since the majority of the cells had United States in column F, I elected to
- insert a column between the event and the first place field.
- for a place that needed shifted to the left, I placed the cursor in that blank cell betweent the event and and place, right clicked and selected DELETE
- I then selected ‘Shift Cells Left’
- In some cases, the cells need to be shifted to the right to line up the state and country. Thus, I highlighted a cell to the left of those needing shifted, right clicked, selected INSERT and then selected SHIFT CELLS RIGHT.
- Once the places were lined up into columns, I could change the column headings.
In order to sort by year, I need to extract the year from the dates into a separate column. To do this, I
- inserted a column after the date column
- in cell B2, I entered the following: =RIGHT(A2,4)
- That formula pulls the last 4 characters from the information in cell A2 and places it in cell B2. Thus, the ‘year’ is copied from column A to Column B.
- I then used the ‘FILL DOWN’ function to copy that formula down column B.
- I applied the YEAR label to column B
Now, I could sort the information by place and/or by year.
While it took a little bit of time to manipulate the spreadsheet, it was MUCH faster pulling the data from RootsMagic than creating a timeline by hand!
Now I know the various Missouri counties to look in for records!