charts of multiple ancestors and descendants
cecilia
I've been asked to produce a family tree for a wedding that should
show up to all great-great-grandparents and down to all the
great-great-grandparents' descendants (to include 1st, 2nd, 3rd
cousins of each of the couple).
I can't envisage any layout that will not end up a tangle of links
from which the average wedding guest will shy away.
I'm veering towards producing a series of individual descendant
trees, each starting with a direct ancestor couple, with pieces of
cord acting as cross-references for each direct ancestor from the
sheet showing the birth (and ancestor) family to that for the
marriage and descendant family.
Has anyone else tried to do this sort of thing?
(Do respond privately, but please keep the subject line.)
[ Actually, please respond to the group. This sounds like a problem
that may come up for other members of the Methods community, too.
Thanks, Mod. ]
my...@ic24.net (cecilia)
ne...@jecarter.us
> I've been asked to produce a family tree for a wedding that should
> show up to all great-great-grandparents and down to all the
> great-great-grandparents' descendants (to include 1st, 2nd, 3rd
> cousins of each of the couple).
>
> I can't envisage any layout that will not end up a tangle of links
> from which the average wedding guest will shy away.
>
> I'm veering towards producing a series of individual descendant
> trees, each starting with a direct ancestor couple, with pieces of
> cord acting as cross-references for each direct ancestor from the
> sheet showing the birth (and ancestor) family to that for the
> marriage and descendant family.
>
> Has anyone else tried to do this sort of thing?
>
Your idea will probably be easier to follow than the typical long
chart.
I did a chart of GGG-grandparents though current living for my
wife's family reunion a few years ago and the result was 2 1/2 feet
tall and 20+ feet long - you need an industrial-strength plotter to
create something like this. (You do NOT want to tape 30 sheets of
letter-size paper together.) I was fortunate in having a friend who
had a big roll-fed HP plotter in his office. My chart was
considered a "test of large plotting capability" on his new plotter,
as even their national network diagrams were not that big ;-)
We taped the chart to the wall at the reunion site. I have found
that people show much more interest in a chart with photos than a
text-only chart. The side benefit of the photo chart is that people
who don't find a photo of themselves, their children/grandchildren,
or their ancestors will usually provide the most current available
photo to be aded to the chart. I will take a scanner with me to
the next family reunion so I can capture those photos immediately.
John
Cheryl Freeman
> I've been asked to produce a family tree for a wedding that should
> show up to all great-great-grandparents and down to all the
> great-great-grandparents' descendants (to include 1st, 2nd, 3rd
> cousins of each of the couple).
>
> I can't envisage any layout that will not end up a tangle of links from
> which the average wedding guest will shy away.
>
> I'm veering towards producing a series of individual descendant
> trees, each starting with a direct ancestor couple, with pieces of
> cord acting as cross-references for each direct ancestor from the
> sheet showing the birth (and ancestor) family to that for the
> marriage and descendant family.
>
> Has anyone else tried to do this sort of thing?
>
> my...@ic24.net (cecilia)
Hello Cecilia,
When I did a chart showing multiple descendants of multiple lines
for a family reunion, I did something similar to what you are
considering. I selected the parents of the eldest living generation
(let's call them Bob and Jane Smith) and created a descendant chart
for them. It was 5 generations, and laid out horizontally, it was
about 8 feet wide by 3 feet tall. I then created two more charts,
"Ancestors of Bob Smith" and "Ancestors of Jane Smith". I did not
do ancestor charts for all the collateral lines, nor did I show
decendants of anyone but "Bob Smith and "Jane Smith", but your idea
of cord might tie them together well. I've seen bigger charts and
it seemed that most people's interest seemed to be in finding their
direct line of descent. I think trying to do one chart showing all
lines of descent might be overwhelming for the non-genalogically
inclined. I will be interested in seeing the reponses.
Cheryl Freeman
"Cheryl Freeman" <che...@genattic.com>
bob gillis
cecilia wrote:
> I've been asked to produce a family tree for a wedding that should
> show up to all great-great-grandparents and down to all the
> great-great-grandparents' descendants (to include 1st, 2nd, 3rd
> cousins of each of the couple).
What you want is an hourglass chart. Many programs can produce them
including FTM and TMG.
Google "Hourglass chart|charts"
Some of the pages you will find are way out of date such as Richard
Wilson's
> I can't envisage any layout that will not end up a tangle of links
> from which the average wedding guest will shy away.
>
> I'm veering towards producing a series of individual descendant
> trees, each starting with a direct ancestor couple, with pieces of
> cord acting as cross-references for each direct ancestor from the
> sheet showing the birth (and ancestor) family to that for the
> marriage and descendant family.
>
> Has anyone else tried to do this sort of thing?
>
> (Do respond privately, but please keep the subject line.)
This list is Reply-to-List as other subscribers may be interested in
the replies as Brian says.
bob gillis
> [ Actually, please respond to the group. This sounds like a problem
> that may come up for other members of the Methods community, too.
> Thanks, Mod. ]
bob gillis <robert...@verizon.net>
singhals
cecilia wrote:
> I've been asked to produce a family tree for a wedding that should
> show up to all great-great-grandparents and down to all the
> great-great-grandparents' descendants (to include 1st, 2nd, 3rd
> cousins of each of the couple).
>
> I can't envisage any layout that will not end up a tangle of links
> from which the average wedding guest will shy away.
>
> I'm veering towards producing a series of individual descendant
> trees, each starting with a direct ancestor couple, with pieces of
> cord acting as cross-references for each direct ancestor from the
> sheet showing the birth (and ancestor) family to that for the
> marriage and descendant family.
>
> Has anyone else tried to do this sort of thing?
Yeah. For my sins.
You can do an Ahnentafel from the Great-great-grandparents backward
in time, and a Descendant chart from them forward in time. This /
almost/ gets you there, and if you print it to file, you can fix it
to suit (tart it up with colored fonts -- red for the ladies, blue
for the gents, and *BOLD* for direct lineage), or add in hearts and
flowers or whatever seems appropriate for each couple. Scrapbooking
supplies are great for that!
However, first print off a nice little fan chart and see if that'll
work for them. I created a "child" of the marriage using the two
surnames as the child's name, then did a fan chart for that child,
and used hi-liter on the dividing lines and scrap-booking shears on
the edges, glued cheap lace and a craft stick as a handle between
two copies to get front'n'back. This also has the advantage of
being INSTANTLY understandable to the families and easy to explain
to others.
As you say, wedding guests, even family, aren't likely to want to
spend a lot of time on it and more than one page, even if you do it
as an 11x18 is probably overkill?
Even at non-wedding gatherings, you can run into TMI. A descendancy
chart isn't as easy for non-genealogists to read as we think it is.
(g) I used PAF Companion to print a multi-page (40, if memory
serves) descendancy chart for a family reunion once -- and spent the
day explaining how to read it.
> (Do respond privately, but please keep the subject line.)
>
>
> [ Actually, please respond to the group. This sounds like a problem
> that may come up for other members of the Methods community, too.
> Thanks, Mod. ]
I bcc'd her on this.
[ PERFECT! - Mod ]
Cheryl
singhals <sing...@erols.com>
cecilia
singhals wrote
>cecilia wrote:
>
> > I've been asked to produce a family tree for a wedding that should
> > show up to all great-great-grandparents and down to all the
> > great-great-grandparents' descendants (to include 1st, 2nd, 3rd
> > cousins of each of the couple).
> > [...]
> You can do an Ahnentafel from the Great-great-grandparents
> backward in time, and a Descendant chart from them forward
> in time.
It's the "a Descendant chart from them" that's the problem, with 16
pairs of great-great-grandparents (8 for the bride, 8 for the groom)
and pairs of descendant lines merging in each generation.
After some more discussion with the bride (with my urging a less
ambitious tree), I've produced her father's side of it in the form
of a tree up to her gggparents, in which her siblings and nieces/
nephews are shown as individuals, her aunts and uncles and first
cousins are shown as individuals with children of the first cousins
listed in the parent's box, her great-uncles and aunts are shown as
individuals with their children and grandchildren (any ggchildren
being ignored as too young, but could be listed if she wants) listed
in the parent's box, and the greatgreatuncles and aunts and the
greatgreatgreatuncles and aunts shown as sibling boxes (one per
ancestor) naming individuals or families that descend from the
collection of siblings (eg "siblings, whose g'children include
Bertie XXX, Amy YYY, Chris ZZZ", or "siblings from whom descend the
PPP and KKK families").
The idea is that there are similar charts for the other 3 sides, so
her parents can be linked, and the bride and groom linked.
My husband looked at it and said it seemed difficult to read,
because it worked upwards, not downwards. I pointed out that two of
the four had to be that way so the couple meet in the centre, and
the draft-for-concept version needed to be one of the that-way-up
quadrants.
It has information about 6 generations, and fits on an A4 sheet
landscape (Powerpoint, Times New Roman 8pt). It looks good on A3,
and I think would be wall-displayable to large groups if enlarged to
A2.
Displaying 4 A2 sheets on a wall would be feasible.
But the bride might not like it, so I'm open to more ideas.
I emailed it to the bride on Friday night but have heard nothing yet
- I tell myself it's a Bank Holiday weekend, and I should not chase
her until tomorrow.
my...@ic24.net (cecilia)
Fred McKenzie
> I've been asked to produce a family tree for a wedding that should
> show up to all great-great-grandparents and down to all the
> great-great-grandparents' descendants (to include 1st, 2nd, 3rd
> cousins of each of the couple).
>
Cecilia-
If I understand your needs, perhaps a "Relative Chart" would work if
you created a fictitious child of the upcoming wedding, and did the
chart for that child. This is one of the charts available in
Reunion on a Macintosh computer.
I did such a chart for my Brother-in-law's family reunion. It
printed out on several sheets that I taped together. It was laid
out on a table at the reunion, and guests were asked to write-in
missing information and corrections. The updated chart was then
saved in both .JPG and .PDF format, and included on a souvenir CD of
reunion photos.
Fred
Fred McKenzie <fm...@aol.com>
Bob Melson
> > I've been asked to produce a family tree for a wedding that should
> > show up to all great-great-grandparents and down to all the
> > great-great-grandparents' descendants (to include 1st, 2nd, 3rd
> > cousins of each of the couple).
> >
> > my...@ic24.net (cecilia)
>
> you created a fictitious child of the upcoming wedding, and did the
> chart for that child. This is one of the charts available in
> Reunion on a Macintosh computer.
>
> I did such a chart for my Brother-in-law's family reunion. It
> printed out on several sheets that I taped together. It was laid
> out on a table at the reunion, and guests were asked to write-in
> missing information and corrections. The updated chart was then
> saved in both .JPG and .PDF format, and included on a souvenir CD of
> reunion photos.
>
May I suggest a slightly different approach? I can't take credit -
maybe I shouldn't! - but I read this a while ago and thought it a
good idea for just this kind of situation.
Get a large cork-board or something similar, which you can decorate
and to which you can pin things. Set this up prominently at the
reception so folks HAVE to pass it on the way in. On as many 3x5 or
5x8 cards as you need, print the genealogical info for all the folks
you want to display. Arrange the cards however is appropriate for
your couple, tho' I'd tend to go for a "rooted tree" with them at
the top. Connect the cards with colored tape (or knitting yarn or
??) to show relationships. Invite folks to add information by
telling 'em so and providing blank cards they can fill in and, if
you wish, pin behind the cards you've created. You can pay 'em back
by providing a CD or a "book" based on the updated family
information.
(no)S(talgic) Ol' Bob
--
Robert G. Melson | Rio Grande MicroSolutions | El Paso, Texas
-----
A government big enough to give you everything you want is big
enough to take away everything you have. Thomas Jefferson
Bob Melson <amia...@mypacks.net>
cecilia
cecilia wrote:
[...]
> After some more discussion with the bride (with my urging a less
> ambitious tree), I've produced her father's side of it in the form
> of a tree up to her gggparents, in which her siblings and nieces/
> nephews are shown as individuals, her aunts and uncles and first
> cousins are shown as individuals with children of the first cousins
> listed in the parent's box, her great-uncles and aunts are shown as
> individuals with their children and grandchildren (any ggchildren
> being ignored as too young, but could be listed if she wants) listed
> in the parent's box, and the greatgreatuncles and aunts and the
> greatgreatgreatuncles and aunts shown as sibling boxes (one per
> ancestor) naming individuals or families that descend from the
I'm grateful for all the comments - Thank you.
I've learnt that what I want is called "enhanced hourglass" in
Generations, and that I was correct to be worried about dimensions.
I was interested to see that
http://www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=2670
when giving a specific example for use (mother's 75th birthday
present) don't suggest adding cousins to the ancestors/descendants,
merely (great-)nephews etc.
I think, for a wedding, one has to aim differently from a reunion
(where one does want the whole family) - at the last family wedding
I attended the invitations were not family wide (not even all the
first cousins) but just a selection of family members; the 140
guests ended up as roughly even numbers from groom's family, groom's
friends, bride's family, bride's friends.
[I agree about photographs. In the wedding in the previous
paragraph, the bride had printed photographs of all present (mostly
taken in the previous couple of years) and had them pinned up
(without names) in a pair of random arrangements at the disco at the
end of the partying. They were interesting to all, since by then
most people had spoken to, or at least seen, most of the others.]
As for my own task - the bride says she is thrilled to bits with
what I've done and I've sent it on to the people who can do her
mother's and the groom's sides. Job done (apart from tinkering to
put the four parts together)!
my...@ic24.net (cecilia)
Joe Makowiec
On 02 Sep 2009 in soc.genealogy.methods, cecilia wrote:
> My husband looked at it and said it seemed difficult to read,
> because it worked upwards, not downwards. I pointed out that two of
> the four had to be that way so the couple meet in the centre, and
> the draft-for-concept version needed to be one of the that-way-up
> quadrants.
How about a vertical chart, ggg grandparents from one side on the
left, progressing in to the happy couple and then back out to ggg
grandparents from the other side on the right? If they want
information on other than direct ancestors, bring along a laptop or
a netbook with a copy of the dataset on it.
--
Joe Makowiec
http://makowiec.org/
Email: http://makowiec.org/contact/?Joe
Usenet Improvement Project: http://improve-usenet.org/
Joe Makowiec <mako...@invalid.invalid>
Lesley Robertson
> I've been asked to produce a family tree for a wedding that should
> show up to all great-great-grandparents and down to all the
> great-great-grandparents' descendants (to include 1st, 2nd, 3rd
> cousins of each of the couple).
>
> I can't envisage any layout that will not end up a tangle of links
> from which the average wedding guest will shy away.
>
> I'm veering towards producing a series of individual descendant
> trees, each starting with a direct ancestor couple, with pieces of
> cord acting as cross-references for each direct ancestor from the
> sheet showing the birth (and ancestor) family to that for the
> marriage and descendant family.
>
> Has anyone else tried to do this sort of thing?
>
Older version of FTM do an "everyone in the database" tree which I
find very useful. Printing the thing is complex - I usually end up
with a stack of pages to stick together - and the computer fits
groups into convenient spaces so it's more like following a map than
looking at a conventional tree, but I find it so useful that I've
not upgraded since they took the feature out. Look for FTM 2005 or
older.
Lesley Robertson
"Lesley Robertson" <l.a.ro...@tnw.tudelft.nl>
johnb
Genbox includes a customisable "everyone in the database" . There is
a 30-day trial
Extract the subset you want from your database and load it into Genbox.
johnb <deo-...@myamail.com>
Graham Hadfield
The best program for creating charts of this type - or any complex
chart -- is TreeDraw from www.spansoft.org.
It won't create the full chart automatically, you need to form the
initial chart and then add ancestor/descendant charts and merge them
in as necessary. The work involved is worth it, though, because you
end up with a chart looking as you want it to look, not restricted
by the parameters which are a necessary part of automatic chart
generation.
Graham
Graham Hadfield <gra...@jigrah.co.uk>
cecilia
cecilia wrote:
> I've been asked to produce a family tree for a wedding that should
> show up to all great-great-grandparents and down to all the
> great-great-grandparents' descendants (to include 1st, 2nd, 3rd
> cousins of each of the couple).[...]
I managed to get the bride to compromise so the only distant cousins
on the tree were those known to one or other of the couple.
I then divided the chart into 4 for the four parents of the couple.
The bride's parents' families had gggrandparents at the bottom,
working up to the bride, and the groom's gggparents were at the top,
working down to the groom, so that the couple could be linked.
For each of the bride's gggrandparents, I gave a single "box"
(unbordered) for that person's (unnamed) siblings and any cousins
descended from them and known to the bride/groom (naming individuals
or families).
Likewise for the ggrand-parents (except that those siblings whom the
bride had known, though lumped together, had their own names
included)
Siblings of the bride's grandparents were included in individual
boxes, all children and grandchildren being named and listed with
them in the box.
Uncles and aunts and first cousins were named in individual boxes
with children of first cousins named but included in the their
parents' box(es).
Siblings and nephews and nieces all got individual boxes.
The groom's side had less detail so siblings of ancestors were shown
individually.
There were no dates. In a couple of cases, I mentioned that a child
had died young (both were 20C and the bride knew/had known the
siblings).
For space, people's names-of-use were used rather than full names,
but I did include spouses' (maiden) names, if I knew them.
I started with Open Office Impress, but found it difficult to
control. The opportunity of shifting to PowerPoint 2007 arose. I
made the grid spacing as small as possible, and got each of the four
families onto an A4 slide with font Arial 8pt.
For printing, the four slides were "sewn" together by the print-shop.
(I had not realised that I could have huge PowerPoint slides -
another time, I would do that and fit everything together from the
beginning.)
The final print-size was 1meter by 70 centimeters, to fit the
largest clip-frame I could obtain in the time available. (A0 was
out of stock at the only supplier I could find.)
I got some copies on A3 (folded, in plastic A4 sleeves) for the four
data-providers, and the parents. I also did an A4 sheet to carry
with me at the wedding - just readable with normal reading glasses
for me.
Some fairly rapid research turned out to be necessary for not only
the groom's side (which had been anticipated, and mainly done by
others), but also the bride's maternal grandparents' parentage.
Luckily it was easy (and even better, produced only a few names to
be fitted onto what was a very crowded quarter of the chart.)
Having the chart in a frame meant it could be displayed, either on
an easel, or leaning against a wall on a sideboard, at the
pre-nuptial parties the evening before, and the evening before that,
and then in different locations as the party afterwards moved from
drinks on the lawn to dinner to dancing.
I had been rather against the idea (too many different familiers, so
not enough overall interest), but it was much studied.
It dawned on me that it was not only interesting ("Is my name
there?") to the family guests, but also to the friends - there were
8 young attendants, all on the chart, and it meant that how they,
and many of the other children present, fitted together could be
worked out by the guests.
(And people were very polite about the two errors, missed by the
proof-reader, that I had created from what had been sent to me
electronically.)
my...@ic24.net (cecilia)
Wes Groleau
bob gillis wrote:
> What you want is an hourglass chart. Many programs can produce them
> including FTM and TMG.
And the free web-based PhpGedView
--
Wes Groleau
World's Strangest Laws
http://Ideas.Lang-Learn.us/russell?itemid=3D1478
Wes Groleau <Grolea...@FreeShell.org>
cecilia
Wes Groleau wrote:
> bob gillis wrote:
>
> > What you want is an hourglass chart. Many programs can produce them
> > including FTM and TMG.
>
> And the free web-based PhpGedView
An hour-glass chart is designed, as I understand it, to show
ancestors and descendants of a particular individual/couple. I
needed also to include descendants of various ancestors and cousins.
An All-Relatives or Enhanced Hourglass chart would be closer, but
I left people out if unknown to the bride and groom and their
parents and not direct ancestors.
Program-produced charts can be very large, and this had to be
frameable.
I really don't think that any program's chart would have given me
the ability to arrange my data in such a way that it fitted into a
reasonable sized rectangle, with writing large enough to be read
when displayed for group viewing, any easier than Powerpoint (if at
all) - at least, not unless I had spent time "fixing" the data
within the database to produce the desired results.
Dividing the rectangle into 4 (one for each of the parents of each
of the couple), each had 6 generations, but a different number of
names. The most crowded quarter of the tree had over 190 names -
fitted on to an A4 sheet in Arial 8pt. The full rectangle was A2
with Arial 8pt. Reduced to A3 it was readable in the hand.
(Reducuing to A4 meant a good light was useful.) Enlarged to A0.5
(or whatever 100m by 70m is called), it was readable when displayed.
my...@ic24.net (cecilia)
singhals
cecilia wrote:
> Wes Groleau wrote:
>
> > bob gillis wrote:
> >
> > > What you want is an hourglass chart. Many programs can produce them
> > > including FTM and TMG.
> >
> > And the free web-based PhpGedView
>
> An hour-glass chart is designed, as I understand it, to show
> ancestors and descendants of a particular individual/couple. I
> needed also to include descendants of various ancestors and cousins.
Actually, a bow-tie chart might have worked ... but, as you say,
most of these don't include siblings, only straight line up or down.
And, you may have had to add a pseudo-child for the bridal couple to
get the bow-tie ...
Any direction you slice it, it was a lot of work and I'm glad they
appreciated your efforts!
Cheryl
singhals <sing...@erols.com>