Make a Family History Timeline

A family history timeline puts your ancestors on one date axis: when each person was born, married, moved and died, and what was happening in the world around them. A family tree shows who is related to whom. A timeline shows when, which is the part that answers questions like who was alive at the same time, how old a grandparent was when the family emigrated, or which records should exist for a given decade.

People build one to organize genealogy research, to prepare for a family reunion, to go alongside a written family history, or for a school project about where their family came from.

What to include

Start with the people and the events you can put a date on:

Lifespans. One event per person, running from birth to death, so their lives show as overlapping bars.
Marriages and children. Single dates that tie the lifespans together.
Moves and migrations. The emigration, the move west, the house the family lived in for forty years.
Work and military service. Useful context, and often the source of the records you found.

Preceden is not a family tree program, and it does not import family tree files such as GEDCOM. It works best alongside one: the tree holds the relationships, and the timeline shows how those lives lined up in time.

Give each branch its own layer

Put each branch of the family on its own layer, such as one for your mother's side and one for your father's, or one per generation if you are following a single line back. Each layer can have its own color, so the branches stay easy to tell apart.

Click the Add Layer button above the timeline to create each one. If you started from the Simple layout, its empty "Events" layer is removed when you add your first layer, so there is nothing to rename. The other layouts start with two or three layers called "Layer", which you can rename by clicking a name in the list below the timeline. When you add an event, choose its branch from the Layer menu.

It also helps to add one layer for historical context: the wars, epidemics and migrations that shaped the choices your ancestors made. Seeing a family's move next to the event that caused it often explains more than the records do.

Dates you are not sure of

Genealogy is full of dates you only know roughly. Preceden accepts a year on its own, such as 1868, or a month and year, such as March 1868. You can also enter a decade such as 1880s, which Preceden splits into 1880 to 1889 when the event is created. Supported Date Formats covers the rest.

When a date is an estimate, check Approx. next to it in the event dialog. On a lifespan, the bar fades at that end to show the date is approximate. On a single date, such as a baptism, the label reads Approx. 1868 by default.

For relatives who are still living, set the end date to Present, and their bar runs up to today.

Mark the turning points

A few dates change everything for a family: the year they emigrated, a war that took a generation, the move that brought them to where you live now. For those, open More Options in the event dialog and check Make this event a milestone. Preceden draws a milestone as a vertical line across the full height of the timeline, so you can see where every branch stood at that moment.

Keep your sources with the events

Every event has a Notes field that accepts Markdown, including links. Use it to record where each date came from, such as the census year, the parish register or the ship manifest, with a link to the record if it is online. When two sources disagree, the notes are a good place to say so.

You can also add an image to an event, such as a portrait, a scanned certificate or a photo of the family home.

If your research is already in a spreadsheet

On a paid plan, you can import events from a spreadsheet instead of typing them in one at a time. Put a tilde (~) in front of a date in the spreadsheet to mark it as approximate.

New timelines are private until you change that, so nothing is visible while you are still researching. When you are ready, you can share a link with relatives or save it as a PDF to print for a reunion. Adjust Timeline Visibility explains each option. If other relatives are researching too, our Pro plan lets you invite them as collaborators so they can add what they know.

The free plan allows up to 10 events on each timeline, which is enough to try the idea out on one family line. A full family history usually needs more, and our paid plans lift the event limit.