OURTIMELINES.COM: SHOWING LIVES IN
CONTEXT
©2020 Donald R. Snow
Page last updated 2020-04-15.
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ABSTRACT: A timeline is a chronological
list of events with their dates so you see what
happened in context. The website http://ourtimelines.com/index.shtml
is a free website that allows you to enter
beginning and ending years and see the major world
events during that time period. See an
example here.
These are colorful bar charts to indicate the
length of the events during that overall time
period. The website allows you to enter up
to 10 personal events, so those are included in
order. The charts can be saved for genealogy
or other programs and use in presentations.
Since you see the person's life in context of
world events, you may see other types of records
to look for, e.g. military records, natural
disasters, inventions, etc. The notes for
this class and related articles, all with
active Internet links, are on Don's
website https://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
.
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
- Instructor is Donald R. Snow ( snowd@math.byu.edu
) of Provo and St. George, Utah.
- These notes, with active Internet links and
other related articles, are posted on Don's
website https://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-classes.html
.
- Tips: (1) Easy to put an icon on
your desktop for the URL for these notes; just
drag the icon in front of the address in your
browser to your desktop. (2) To open
a link from here in another tab, but keep your
place in these notes, hold down the Control key
while clicking the link.
- This class will discuss the frree wesbsite http://ourtimelines.com/index.shtml
which shows lives in context of what was
happening during that time period.
- There is a Freeware Corner article about
this website on my webpage at https://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/dons-freewarecorner-2015-01-ourtimelinescom.html
TIMELINES
- A timeline is a chronological list of
events, with their dates, during a person's
life, for example.
- Example -- timeline of my Grandmother Ann
Stafford Snow Condie posted on my website -- https://uvtagg.org/classes/dons/StaffordAnn(Snow)(Condie)(1867-1948)-TIMELINE-WithPersonalData-GeneratedFromOurtimelines-com--2020-04-01.html
- Timelnes show an overview of a life in
context and, if it shows world events then,
you see the life in contgext get ideas of
things to look at further -- examples
- If you see children born in the wrong
order or large gaps between children born,
there may be others to look for
- If the person was of military age when a
war was going on, you may need to look for
military records.
- Natural disasters that occurred during
the person's life, such as floods, major
storms, earthquakes, or epidemics
(Coronavirus COVID-19!), there may be
newspaper or other accounts to check.
- Some genealogy programs generate timelines
for the dates of events you have entered and
some even include world-wide events
- The ourtimelines.com website will generate
the event list for you and allow you to enter
some information about the person to show in
the timeline
- The resulting charts can be saved
so you can use them in your genealogy or other
programs.
OURTIMELINES.COM
- Website -- http://ourtimelines.com/index.shtml
-- free website; read some of the info and
when ready to try it, click TIMELINE (upper
left side)
- You enter name, birth and death (or current)
year
- Example -- type in your own name and birth
year and current year and click Generate
Timeline
- You get a brightly-colored bar-chart
timeline of world events turing that period
that shows
- Events from birth year to ending year
- Colored bars show the length of time that
event lasted
- Colors represent different types of events
(see color code list below)
- Underlined events are links for more info
about that event \
- Person's age is at end of event line
- The color coding of events in the timelines
generated is as follows.
- Light blue -- Historical Event
- Pink -- Leadership and Political
- White -- Technology Event
- Red -- Disaster, Wars, Plagues, etc.
- Yellow -- Personal Historical Event
- Orange -- Personal Disaster - Death of
Loved One, Illness, etc.
- To save the chart, see below
- Earliest year you can enter seems to be 1000
AD; latest date is right now and they have
already included the Coronavirus COVID-19
World-Wide Pandemic
ENTERING PERSONAL EVENTS
- Can enter up to 10 personal events
- When adding personal events, be sure to
check the Personal Event box at the end of the
line, so they are shown in yellow.
- For personal events such as birth, marriage,
and children, I find that entering a birth
year and a death year shows the bar that is
the length of the life and makes it easier to
understand; otherwise these show up as slim
vertical lines in the chart: see exmples in my
Grandmother's chart (Link near top of these
notes)
- If you know enough about html, you can enter
more than 10 personal events and you can even
include links like in some of the world
events, so you can add more info
- To get around the 10-personal-event limit
you could set up a series of timelines with
one for birth to marriage, one for marriage to
retirement, one for retirement to death,
etc. Or you could do separate timelines
for education, marriage and family, work,
etc., but then the events wouldn't all be in
one timeline.
SAVING THE CHART
- Checking the box labelled Printable in front
of the Generate Timeline makes it form a black
and white chart, not the beautiful color
chart, but printing tht takes a lot less
printer ink
- Either the color or B/W charts can be
printed by right-clicking anywhere on the
chart and printing to your printer or
Print to Microsoft PDF
- The chart can also be saved by using a
scrolling window screen capture program like
FASTSTONE CAPTURE; it works best to save it as
a PDF so you see it just like it was
originally; the underlined links probably
won't work in these PDFs; the program
FASTSTONE CAPTURE is discussed in other notes
and article on my website
- You can also right-click anywhere on the
chart and save it as an html file, so when you
click on it, it opens your browser and looks
just like it did online and then all links
work
- My file-naming system for such files is
SnowDonaldRay(1931-)-TIMELINE-HISTORY-GeneratedByOurTimelinesCom--2020-04-02.html
- With this name the file shows up in lists
of files related to me in the freeware
program EVERYTHING which is discussed in
other notes and articles on my
website.
- This naming system forms an interactive
timeline of my life and these files for
TIMELINE, HISTORY, etc., are all together at
the end of the list
- More details of my naming system are on my
webpage.
USES OF THESE GENERATED TIMELINES
- If you use a chart in a book or elsewhere, you
should include a courtesy note on it, so people
can see where it was generated; the FAQs on the
webpage have a suggested note to include
- These PDF timelines can be uploaded and attached
to people in FamilySearch Family Tree.
- Timelines with world events give you an overview
of a person's life in context of what was
happening then and the timeline of a historical
figure you are studying will show things that
influenced their life and career.
- Clues for more records to search about the
person
- Large gaps between ages of children - check
for more children
- Military age during a war in that country -
check for military records
- Natural disasters, e.g. floods, major storms,
epidemics (Coronavirus COVID-19) - check for
medical records or newspaper accounts
- State entering the United States then - check
for land or other type records
- Things to think about when you see the
timelines
- Transportation was by horse and buggy before
the railroad and automobiles
- Standard time and time zones weren't set up
until the transcontinental raillroad was
completed in 1869, so before that each town had
it's own time
- Before the electric light bulb they read
by candles and lanterns
- There was no way to record sound before wax
cylinders and phonograph records; young people
today may not know what "sounding like a broken
record" means
- We used carbon paper and typewriters before
xerox machines and computers; that's where Cc:
and Carriage Return come from
- You get the point about what our ancestors
lived with and timelines help show it
COMMENTS AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
- For people born near the end of the year, e.g.
Joseph Smith, born 23 Dec 1805, you have to enter
his birth as 1806 so the First Vision in 1820
shows his age as 14; that is, if you put his birth
year as 1805 and his First Vision in 1820, it says
it occurred when he was 15, not 14 -- The problem
seems to be the day in the year that
Ourtimelines.com uses to consider the age
- Other items on the website
- Peers and Contempories -- see who was born in
the same year; helps put your ancestor in
perscpective; I was surprised at the list of
people born in 1867, the same year as my
Grandmother.
- Birthdays -- see who else has a birthday on
that month and day
- FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions -- lots of
helpful informtion about the website here
CONCLUSIONS
- There are many reasons to use this free website
and it's fun to experiment with.
- You'll probably find it very useful in your
family history for your own and your ancestors's
lives.
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Valley Technology and Genealogy Group Home Page
or Don's
Class Listings Page .
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