A few weeks ago a genealogist named J Paul Hawthorne started a trend that was making the rounds on Facebook and genealogy blogs quite heavily for a week or so. He created a pedigree chart that only shows ancestor’s birth locations. I was busy writing my posts about my great Uncle Darrell and didn’t make my chart until yesterday.
I have a lot of colors on that chart. Lots of variety in birth places. I’m considering taking it back a little bit further on my dad’s side to get it back to the countries of origin.
I am fascinated by this new visual way to consider my ancestors.
Have you made a chart? You can find an excel template in this post. I created mine using google docs.
Mine was not nearly as pretty!
Well, it was pretty straightforward right? That’s it’s own kind of pretty. 😉
Fun idea! I’ll put that on my ‘to-do- list! Thanks for sharing!
You are welcome Lenore! Glad you like the idea. 🙂
This looks neat. Just what I’m currently doing laboriously by longhand. I hope I can figure out how to do the color tree.
Thank you Janet! Give it a whirl and if you have questions let me know – I’m happy to help.
I saw this too, and thought I must try it sometime. Mine will be pretty simple at a country level — Scotland — maybe a bit more interesting if I get it down to county. In the case of my overwhelming number of Fife ancestors, I may have to go to village level to get any colour in the chart. 🙂
I saw one person who did it twice, once by state in the US and then by county because all of her people are from two states. It still wasn’t all that colorful because they only came from a few counties so your idea of going down to village level sounds pretty good to me! I always tell people I am the human version of Heinz 57 and here is my visual proof. The good news of that is that I have developed a lot of broad genealogy knowledge working in so many different parts of of the world.
I must remember that when I get stuck with the ancestors who migrated! I am almost the direct opposite — a specialist in east Fife. I suppose it would be really useful if I ever go on Mastermind or some similar quiz show. 🙂