Among the many things I took away from that presentation was the idea of creating timelines to show my ancestors in the context of their family's events and local/national/international events. Laura mentioned free sites like xtimeline.com. (A wonderful find!)
She also mentioned that we have the ability to publish timelines, among other things, using Ancestry and the family tree data we've already posted. I'd never looked at that "Publish" button along the top row of the Ancestry home page. Pushing "publish" started me on the easy process of printing an 18 x 24 inch poster for my hubby's siblings, showing the four main families that correspond to each of their grandparents. (If you don't want to buy the tree poster, you can still print it free on your home printer--I did that too.)
In another browser window, I opened Family Search and quickly found an updated database of Ohio marriages. Info that wasn't indexed or digitized a year ago has been put online! (My lesson: Keep searching for those elusive ancestors or events--eventually new clues will present themselves.)
With just a couple of clicks, we now have the marriage document of James E. Wood of Toledo and his bride, Mary Slatter, who were married on 21 September 1898. All because we wanted to put together a family tree poster (see below).
The poster points up a glaring hole in the tree: We still don't know the parents of Mary Amanda Demarest. Cousin Larry has been on her trail for decades.
What a great poster! And you were able to create it in ancestry.com? I will have to explore that.
ReplyDeleteElizabeth, I was surprised . . . the posters come in different sizes (corresponding to different numbers of generations shown) and are highly customizable. I added the big photo to replace the smaller photos of the two main people, for example. Also I increased the size of the words for readability. It's definitely worth checking out how this works! Have fun.
ReplyDeletePS Before I posted the photo of the poster here, I digitally erased some data about living people, which is why there's such a large area at center bottom with only a few photos and no names/dates/details.
ReplyDelete