Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
You want to create a family history timeline to help you write about your parents’ or grandparents’ lives, but you aren’t sure about all the dates. You know some with certainty, like your dad’s birthday. But you don’t know the exact date he was drafted, moved to Miami, got the diagnosis, or started his business.
You wonder if you can find some of those dates on family history websites, but you don’t know where to start, and it feels overwhelming.
You are not alone. Most family story writers I’ve worked with are frustrated when they don’t know specific dates. To their surprise, they don’t need that level of detail to begin.
When you capture what you do know about time, even if it’s approximate, you often have enough to create a simple family history timeline. You preserve what you know about your parents’ and grandparents’ lives and begin to see their lives more clearly.
This post is part of the First Timer Storykeeping Series, designed to help you start writing your family story using the Storykeeping® method.
Get Ready to Write
Capture First, Craft Your Story Second
A lot of family history advice is designed for genealogy research or long family history records, but that’s not what I’m helping you do here. I’m going to show you how to create a simple family history timeline using what you already know about your parents’ or grandparents’ lives.
You don’t need fancy software. You just need a place to write, and in fact, setting up two places to write will make the process easier.
If you’ve already set up your two writing spots, skip to the next section.
Why two writing spots? Because there are two kinds of writing in a family history project.
- Capture is writing down what you already know about your family history timeline, along with other things that come up in the process, like family names, places, events, and your questions.
- Craft is writing about something you’ve captured.
Set up one place to capture and another to craft.
#1 – Your Home Base for Capturing
When you create a family history timeline, things you know about your family come to mind. People, places, and events that mattered. It can feel overwhelming fast.
Having a dedicated place to capture this information is useful. Like a Home Base for things you know about your family’s past.
I designed the Writing Family History Template, available as a printable PDF or a Google Sheet, to make it easy for you to set up your Home Base.
The template includes space for your family history timeline and the other family details people often want to preserve: NAMES, PLACES, OBJECTS, and EVENTS. It also has a place for QUESTIONS.
Your Home Base will help you bring some order to the things you know about your family history. You won’t lose what you’ve written down, and you’ll know where it is when you need it.
It can also become a meaningful family history document you can share with your kids.
But you don’t have to use the template. You can set up your Home Base in any way that works for you.
#2 – Your Notebook for Crafting
Choose one Notebook for writing about your family history. I suggest writing by hand because many people find it easier to get a few words down with a pen than with a keyboard.
Pick a notebook that feels comfortable to you. This is your private space to get messy and explore. Here, you’ll take something from your Home Base and jot a few words about it.
Later, you can move to your computer and continue building on the words you wrote in your Notebook.
If writing by hand isn’t for you, a Word document or Google Doc can serve as your Notebook. Again, choose one spot and stick with it.
If you need more help setting up your writing spots, see How to Write Your Family Story: A Simpler Way to Start.
3 Reasons Why
A Timeline Helps You Write Your Family History
A timeline is a simple way to lay out the events in your parents’ or grandparents’ lives in the order they happened. You can use it to see the bigger picture of a life or to focus on a specific period of time. Creating a simple timeline can help you write your family history. Here are three reasons why.
1. It Helps You Place Life Events in Order
You may know plenty of things about your parent’s or grandparent’s life, but when you sit down to write about them, you aren’t sure where to start. Their life is probably not arranged in a clear narrative in your mind because you didn’t learn about it that way.
For example, you may know that your grandparents got married young and that your grandfather served for a year during World War II. But did they get married before or after he went overseas?
Mapping out what you know on a simple timeline helps you place life events in order. It can also help you see what you still want to know. That doesn’t mean you have to write in chronological order. But it gives you a structure to work from, a kind of first draft before you write your first sentence.
2. It Helps You Write a Story, Not Just a Chronology
When people write their family history, they usually have two goals: to preserve what they know about their family for later generations, and to create a story about their family’s past.
If you try to preserve every date and time detail inside the story itself, your writing can start to sound more like a list of facts than a story. A timeline gives chronology its own place. It gives you the freedom to write a story.
For example, you want to write about your mom’s life, especially her career later in life at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. You begin by writing, “My mother, Elaine Green, was born on January 10, 1940, in Newark, NJ,” and then freeze.
You wanted to preserve her birthday, but the story you want to write begins much later. Do you have to write through all those years first? No.
If you begin by creating a timeline, you can preserve the dates you care about first and then decide where you want to begin writing her story.
3. It Helps You See Your Family Story More Clearly
When life events are scattered in your mind, it can be hard to make sense of them. But when you place them on a timeline, even a very simple one, you can begin to see things differently.
A timeline can help you see events with your adult eyes. You may notice gaps in your knowledge, struggles that were never discussed, or stretches of time marked by extraordinary change or hardship.
You may also notice that some events take up a great deal of space in family memory because they were often talked about. Other parts of a life may feel strangely empty or surrounded by silence. Observing this can help you notice what was emphasized, what was left out, and where your questions begin.
For example, maybe your mother, Elaine, lost her own mother in a car accident when she was five and never said much more about it. You map out the timeline and see your mother at five, her sister at two, and your grandfather grieving with two little girls to raise. That kind of perspective can help you understand your mom more deeply and write about her life with clarity and compassion.
Before You Begin
What Belongs on a Family History Timeline?
A family history timeline can include many kinds of time.
Some time details may be exact. You may know a birthday or anniversary. You may remember when a parent or grandparent graduated, retired, or died.
Other time details may be approximate. You may know the year something happened or the decade. Even if it isn’t an exact date, include it on your timeline.
For example, you don’t know the exact date your grandfather started his business, but you do know it was open when your mom was born. Or you don’t know the exact date your dad was diagnosed, but you do know he was going for treatment when you were in college. In each case, capture what you know.
This may be a specific date, a month and year, a year, a decade, or a stretch of time tied to an event or circumstance. If the time period is approximate, you can indicate that by writing words like “circa,” “around,” or “during.”
For example, you might capture the following in your family history Home Base:
- 1943-1945
- May 1, 1946
- 1959
- June 1963
- during the 1970s
- circa 1983
In the Life Event column next to it, write what happened.
The goal is not to build a perfect chronology, but instead create a simple timeline to help you write.
If you want help identifying the kinds of life events that matter, see How to Preserve Family History: Start With Life Events.
Let’s Write Your Story
Create a Simple Timeline and Begin Writing
Choose one family member to focus on for this activity. Start with whoever feels easiest to write about.
Step 1: Create a Simple Family History Timeline (5 min)
Write in the TIMELINE section of your Home Base.
- Set a timer: 4 minutes
- Write down: Whatever time details you know that connect to a life event. In the Life Event column, write what happened.
- You can include exact dates, years, decades, or approximate time periods.
- Review: 1 minute. Read over your list. Add anything else that comes to mind.
Done. You’ve just sketched a simple family history timeline.
Step 2: Choose One Time and Begin Writing (5 min)
Look over the timeline you just sketched. Does a particular time stand out? It might be a time of change, when life was one way, then it was another. Or it might be a time you feel drawn to explore.
Choose one time and the life event connected to it. Write that life event at the top of a page in your Notebook and use the prompt below to begin.
- Set a timer: 4 minutes
- Prompt: What comes to mind about this life event?
- Jot down: Words and phrases.
- No need to polish anything. You’ll do that later. Just get whatever is in your mind down on the page.
- Review: 1 minute. Read what you wrote like a gentle, curious reader. What do you notice? Jot down a few more words. If you notice a feeling, name it.
🌟Optional: Repeat with another date or time period on your timeline.
💡Be Aware: More may come to mind when you walk, drive, do household tasks, or take a shower. Jot it down, even if you’re not sure it belongs in your story.
Next Steps
What Feels Easiest?
Take a moment to notice what you’ve accomplished today.
- For first-time writers: You set up your two writing spots, created a simple family history timeline, and jotted about one life event in your Notebook. You’ve started writing your family history.
- For continuing writers: You’ve taken another step towards writing your family history by creating a simple family history timeline and jotting about one life event in your Notebook.
Now, choose what feels easiest to do next.
Stop for Today
If you are out of time or energy, stop and feel good about what you’ve done. Come back another day and continue writing your family history.
Keep Writing About Life Events
If you’d like to keep going, focus on life events. The EVENTS guide will help you understand which life events matter when writing your family history and how to write about one that matters in your family.
If instead you want to capture family names, write about a family place or object, or have a lot of questions, the guides below can help.
Continue Noticing What You’re Drawn To
This may have been the first time you’ve written about your family’s past, so pause to recognize this moment. As you keep going, notice where your attention goes. That quiet pull is worth trusting and following.
Subscribe below to receive our Story Starter Workbook, a simple guide to help you keep taking small, meaningful steps in preserving your family history.
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs
No. Exact dates are helpful when you know them, but they are not required to begin. A year, a decade, or another approximate time period can help you build a family history timeline that’s useful for your writing.
That’s enough to begin. You probably know a mix of exact dates and rough time periods related to a few significant life events, and that’s enough to sketch out a simple family history timeline. Then you can use what you have to begin writing about one life event. Many people give up before they start because they never pause long enough to discover how much they already know.
You can include any time detail connected to a life event. Births, marriages, moves, losses, schooling, health, hardships, wartime, successes, and other life events all belong on the timeline if they help you understand what happened in your parent’s or grandparent’s life and when.
No. A timeline helps you place life events in order, but that does not mean your story should begin at the beginning of the timeline. The timeline gives chronology its own place, so you are freer to write your story.
In a sense, your timeline is a kind of first draft of your story, a parent’s or grandparent’s life events in chronological order. It can help you notice life events that caused change, times when life was one way, then it was another. Those are often strong places to begin exploring when you write.
