Wordless Wednesday

Monday Memories - From "Cousin" Sandra

My maternal Grandmother's cousin, Sandra, sent me a few memories that she remembered about my Grandmama, Betty Huyler Albea:

"As I told you, we were a close family and usually lived near each other. When we lived in College Park , Betty, Roy and the children lived just a few blocks from us. I was about the only one they would let baby sit. Betty couldn't drive, so we would load up the kids in the station wagon, go to a back road with no traffic and let Betty practice driving. Once in July I drove us to the drive-in theatre. It was a stick shift and I was so nervous trying to keep it from rolling back on the car behind me. We had to wait in line a while and we were all burning up it was so hot, then we discovered one of the boys had turned the heater on full blast !"

"I also have a sad memory of Betty. I was young when Aunt Ruby died, but I will never forget the day of her funeral when Betty came in and saw her mother. She fainted and Roy picked her up like a baby and carried her out."

SNGF - Timeline Charts

This week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun "mission" is to create a timeline chart using our genealogy software.

Personally, I really enjoy the weeks when the ideas force us to explore our genealogy software. I've looked at the timeline chart function in my software program (Reunion) before, but never spent any time figuring out how to really do anything with it. So, I decided to explore my software's timeline functionality and make a five generation timeline chart.

It's an easy process. First, mark everyone that you want to show up in your chart. This just means that you click a little box on each person's page. Next, go to "Create" on the file menu and select "Timeline Chart." Everyone is automatically sorted by birth, but you can sort by death, age, etc. I very easily changed the colors of each person to match others in their generation. Next, I added "Perspective Events" that I had previously loaded into the software (see how to do that here). In this case, I chose US Presidents. I expanded the chart a bit and moved some of the presidents over a tad to make them all fit. To save this chart, simply "Save As," just as with most any other document.

I ended up with a chart that very nicely shows five generations of my family. You can see that the first person, William Britt, was considerably older than others of that generation. Otherwise everyone else just sorta flows, with small gaps to indicate generational changes.

Follow Friday - AnceStories

     When I started my genealogy blog a few years ago, I spent time actively searching for other genealogy blogs to read. One of the first blogs that I found myself really reading was AnceStories.  This blog, recently recognized by Family Tree Magazine as a "Top 40 Genealogy Blog," is filled with great research tips, advice and news, as well as personal research stories.  Lately, I've been following the "52 Weeks of Online American Digital Archives and Databases" series. This is a must read series that pulls together a fantastic list of online genealogy resources by state.  If you're not already following this blog, you should start today.