Family historians know the chronology of key ancestors' lives, but the next generation may not understand the flow as easily.
That's why, in each of my ancestor photo books, I'm including a timeline to show major events in order.
Timeline helps readers
Who was born first? Who got married when and where? When did our immigrant ancestors arrive in North America? The timeline shows readers this info at a glance. I use terminology like "1850s" or "1855ish" when the year is only an approximation. I also cover ongoing activities, such as children going to school, in a range of years.
From my most recent book about paternal grandma Henrietta "Yetta" Mahler and paternal grandpa Isaac Burk, here is one of the timeline pages I created. The timeline continued to another few lines on the following page, ending with the year these ancestors passed away.
My audience tells me over and over that quote black and white is boring unquote so I add color on every page. Here, the title of the page is in blue and the text is in black on an ivory background. Small colored hearts catch the eye and reflect my feeling that these ancestors are held in our hearts.
Timeline helps me
Creating a draft timeline also reminds me of important events as I assemble what I need for a new photo book:
- Photos from different periods in ancestors' lives (sharpen/crop/fix before using, check resolution so photos will reproduce well)
- Selected documents or excerpts (a few intriguing ones such as a marriage cert, a naturalization cert, etc)
- Signatures (enlarged/cropped from ancestors' documents)
- Postcards, maps, other illustrations as appropriate
- Bite-sized bios of focus ancestors, plus their parents, siblings, in-laws, children, which become even more bite-sized in my books.
Great reminder of how to make our work more relevant for lay readers :)
ReplyDeleteThank you for your insights on this. You have so much practical advice.
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