Category: Sources and resources

Methodology, Sources and resources

Use genealogy timelines to organise, analyse and improve your research

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If you think timelines are just for visualising a sequence of events, you’re overlooking one of the most powerful genealogy research tools. A genealogy timeline is more than a list of dates. It’s a framework for understanding your family history.

By placing people in time and space, timelines help clarify identities, expose gaps and inconsistencies, and reveal patterns. These insights can significantly improve the quality of your family history.

In this article, I show how genealogy timelines can help you:

  • Organise complex information
  • Improve research accuracy
  • Plan future research
  • Solve difficult genealogical problems
  • Compare data and evaluate relationships
  • Add historical context to family stories
  • Write clearer and more engaging narratives.

Use timelines to organise and analyse genealogy information

Genealogy generates a lot of data. Timelines bring order by organising information chronologically and geographically, making it easier to see relationships and patterns.

You can easily integrate new information and retrieve it later. This helps you understand your family history more deeply and reduces the risk of overlooking key connections.

Use timelines to improve the accuracy of your family history

The chronological structure of a timeline highlights inconsistencies, such as a person being in two places at once, or multiple versions of an event when there should be only one. These errors often remain hidden in family tree charts but become obvious in a timeline.

A timeline showing multiple baptisms in different locations indicates that the evidence has not been sufficiently analysed to determine which event was the correct one.

Use timelines to plan your research

Whether you’re investigating ancestors in the 1800s or analysing DNA matches today, timelines help you spot gaps, formulate focused research questions, and compare life events across individuals and families. These strategies form the basis of effective timeline analysis in genealogy.

Timelines summarise the key events in a person’s life and highlight periods with little or no data. This helps you spot where you may have missing family members, such as children whose birth records you have not discovered, or identify when and where a family moved. These provide clues to progress your research.

Analysing a timeline can help you:

  • Identify new research leads
  • Develop hypotheses to be tested
  • Formulate focused research questions.
A timeline in Excel shows a gap in the birth years of children which may suggest a missing child requiring further investigation.

Use timelines to solve problems and test hypotheses

Timelines clarify inconsistencies and support hypothesis testing. If you’re trying to demonstrate that someone was in the right place at the right time, a timeline can provide the structure to support or refute that claim.

Example:

A DNA case involved identifying the unknown biological father of a test taker’s father. Analysis of DNA evidence pointed to a family with eight brothers. A timeline based on documentary evidence compared their locations and ages at the time of conception, which helped narrow down the candidates.

Use timelines to compare and analyse relationships

You can include multiple individuals on a single timeline to compare life events, identify patterns and assess possible relationships. This can help confirm family links, or reveal mistaken connections.

Example:

A mother was listed in family trees as giving birth at age 50 and issuing memorial notices about her husband, after the date she was supposed to have died! A timeline revealed that two families had been mistakenly merged due to identical parent names.

Use timelines to document evidence

Timelines can supplement written analysis in an evidence summary or evidence argument (aka proof summary or proof argument). Organising your findings chronologically strengthens the logic of your case and helps readers understand the reasoning behind your conclusions.

Use timelines to provide historical and family context

Timelines place your family’s events within the broader context of historical events, communities and extended families. This can provide clues to motivations or influences, or explain significant life changes such as migration, enlistment, or death due to a prevalent illness or famine.

Example:

A timeline of sons’ births overlaid with World War I dates highlighted why certain young men were absent—they had gone to war.

Use timelines as visual and summary tools

Timelines are ideal for summarising a life story at a glance. They can be shared with family members or other researchers and used as reference tools during research.

A simple timeline graphic from my book, The Good Genealogist, summarises key life events in a visually accessible way.

Use timelines to write your family stories

When writing, a timeline provides a narrative scaffold. It helps ensure chronological accuracy and can stimulate story ideas by highlighting connections between events and people.

Get started using timelines

From simple life summaries to advanced analysis using tools like Excel or Notion, genealogy timelines should be a standard feature of your family history research toolkit.

Tip

What to include in a genealogy timeline for effective family history research:

  • Dates
  • Places
  • People
  • Events
  • (optional) Source citations, Historical events, Research notes.

Ready to get started? Check out my guide to creating a genealogy timeline in Excel.

Read my comparison of genealogy timeline tools to find the right one for your research.

Have questions or tips of your own? Share them in the comments below!


Want more articles about planning your research, analysing information and sources, or documenting your research? Or take a look at my articles about using Excel and Notion in family history.

Here are some examples of historical timelines you can use to add historical context to your family history timelines:

Timeline of Australian history – Wikipedia

Defining moments timeline | National Museum of Australia

Story of England | English Heritage

Methodology, Sources and resources

How to build a genealogy timeline in Notion (with linked views)

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Track your ancestors, spot gaps and tell clearer stories – all by using one Notion database,

Why I needed a new timeline tool

I have over 11,000 people in my family tree. Even using family history software and online family trees, I still find it difficult to visualise the big picture. That’s why I’ve been using Excel for timelines. It handles large datasets and allows flexible views.

But once I began using Notion for research planning and notes, I had to test whether a genealogy timeline would be a useful tool for organising my family history research. It is—and it’s now one of my favourite tools. In this post, I’ll show you why a timeline in Notion is useful, how it complements Excel, and how to build one yourself.

If you’re new to using Notion for genealogy, read my earlier posts in this series first to set up your foundational databases and projects.

Why timelines help your genealogy research

Timelines are not just lists of events. A good genealogy timeline helps you:

  • Understand how people, places, and events are connected
  • Track movement patterns and shared locations
  • Reveal missing information or research gaps
  • Spot errors and inconsistencies
  • Plan your next steps more effectively
  • See individuals in their family, historical and social context
  • Compare individuals, families or generations across time
  • Tell richer, more accurate stories.

Timelines are a powerful way to visualise your family tree, and track events in chronological and geographical order.

Illustration of a family timeline with colourful, stylized figures representing different generations. The text reads: 'One timeline. Every ancestor. Track your family history in Notion.

Why build your timeline in Notion

If you’re already using Notion for research planning and note taking, adding a timeline makes sense. But you don’t need to create multiple timelines. In fact, it’s better to build just one.

Notion’s database features let you:

  • Keep all events in one master timeline
  • Filter and sort views by surname, location, grandparent line, and more
  • Use linked views to display custom subsets on different pages
  • Keep individuals in context—across families, places, and family lines
  • Avoid duplication and minimise data errors.

By including everyone in the same timeline database in Notion, you can see the big picture and also streamline your genealogy research workflow.

This does not mean you no longer need timelines in Excel or another program. Those timelines will still be useful, for different purposes. I will explore these other types of timelines in other articles.

Extract from a genealogy timeline in Notion showing 8 columns and 7 events, with colour coding for place names and surnames.
Extract from my Notion timeline

Essential elements of a genealogy timeline

As a minimum, your genealogy timeline should include:

  • date (best as a year)
  • place (ideally split into three columns)
  • person/people
  • event.

You can enhance your timeline by adding:

  • surnames
  • relationship to you
  • grandparent line
  • event type
  • family tree ID number
  • source citations and notes.

Step-by-Step: Create your genealogy timeline database in Notion

Set up the database

  • Go to your Notion Home Page.
  • Type /database – full page and select it.
  • Rename the table to Timeline.
  • Click the column title and rename the first column as Event.
  • Add the following columns (Notion calls them ‘properties’):
COLUMNTYPEPURPOSE
2 – YearNumberSort chronologically
3 – CountrySelectEnables location filtering
4 – County/StateSelectMore specific filtering
5 – Town/Suburb/VillageTextPrecise place name
6 – GP lineSelectOne or your 4 grandparent lines
7 – PeopleTextNames of individuals involved
8 – SurnameSelectIdentify the family line
9 – Event typeSelectBirth, death, marriage etc
10 – IDNumberUnique identifier number
11 – Relationship to meSelectFilter by generation, e.g. parents or 2x great grandparents

Tip:

Use ‘Select’ type where dropdown lists are helpful. Use ‘Text’ type for long or messy lists like place names or ancestors.

Explanation of key columns

  • Event (Column 1): Each entry in column 1 creates a page, so each entry in that column needs to be unique. That is why I do not put the Year in column 1 (as you will have multiple events for a year). Be consistent with the format, e.g. [event] [first name][surname].
  • GP line (Column 6): Lets you filter events by grandparent line.
  • Surname (Column 8): Helps group events for a family line.
  • Event type (Column 9): Reveals missing event types (e.g. no birth record).
  • ID (Column 10): Links to the profile in your family history software.

You can rearrange columns by dragging them. I move Year to the left of Event so the timeline displays in chronological order (the Year column still stays as column 2, even if it is in a different place).

Adding information and new events to the timeline

To add a new event:

  • Open the Timeline Database Page
  • Click + New Page (at the bottom of the table)
  • Fill out the relevant fields.

You can also add events from any linked view of the Timeline database, or automate entry using a macro button (explained in Family History Macro Buttons in Notion).

Using linked views for custom timelines

Use linked views to create filtered versions of your timeline on any page. These linked views are always synced with your main genealogy timeline database, making Notion a great tool for family history research planning and analysis.

Grandparent line example

To create a filtered timeline by GP line:

  • Open one of your grandparent line project pages
  • Type /linked view database and press enter
  • Search for and select the Timeline Database
  • Click on the Filter button (3 lines, top right)
  • Filter by GP line and choose the relevant line.

Repeat this process for all of your grandparent line project pages.

Country or place example

To create a filtered timeline by location:

  • Open a project page for a country
  • Insert a linked view as above
  • Filter by Country or County/State.

This gives you location-based timelines to track movement patterns and solve a variety of research challenges.

A family history research tool

Timelines bring structure and clarity to your family history.

Building a timeline in Notion helps you organise data, identify research leads, and stay focused. It helps you:

  • Track events across family lines, times and places
  • Spot gaps and inconsistencies, and identify research leads
  • Connect research notes and planning in one workspace.
  • Use it alongside your Excel timelines for maximum benefit.

Read more about genealogy timelines. Watch this space for future articles on timelines and more demonstrations of uses of Notion for genealogy.

Check out my comparison of genealogy timeline tools.

If you want to read more of my work, you may like my book, The Good Genealogist.

Sources and resources

Create a resources page in Notion for family history research

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If you are using Notion for family history research, you may notice how quickly your Home Page can become cluttered and crowded. Templates, checklists and research tools are useful, but they don’t all need to be on the Home Page. The solution? Create a dedicated Resources Page in Notion to keep your genealogy workspace clear, focused, and easy to navigate.

This is Post 9 in my Notion for Family History series.

Why have a family history Resources Page?

Your Home Page in Notion is the starting point or dashboard for your family history workspace. It should take you directly to the next step in your research workflow. It might include a few summaries or shortcuts, but cramming it with everything you use regularly can make it overwhelming.

Instead, store all those helpful extras like tools, templates, checklists, examples and shortcuts, on a separate Resources Page. Then add a link to it from your Home Page.

These steps assume you’re familiar with the basics of using Notion and have begun using it for family history research. If not, check out the earlier posts in this series.

Create a Resources Page

Option 1: As a sub-page of your Home Page

  • Open your Home Page
  • Find a spot where you’d like to place the link to your Resources Page
  • Type /page to create a new sub-page
  • Name it Resources, add an icon and cover image.

Option 2: As a main page

  • From any Notion page, click on the new page icon (pencil in a box) in the lefthand sidebar next to your name.
  • Name the new Page ‘Resources’, and add an icon and cover image.

I prefer Option 2, because it adds a link on the sidebar under your Home Page. However, if you use Option 1, you can add a link to the sidebar by marking the page as a favourite.

To add a ‘favourite’ link on your sidebar:

  • Navigate to the page you want to link,
  • Click on the star icon in the top-right corner of the page.

Set up your Resources Page

Use block formatting and columns to organise the content of the page in a way that works for you.

Use sub-pages to organise your resources

You don’t need to cram everything into a single page. Create sub-pages for different resource types. Here are some suggestions:

There are two ways to create your sub-pages:

Option 1: Add Pages Directly

  • While on your Resources Page, type /page

Option 2: Use a Database

  • While on your Resources Page, type /database – inline and choose ‘New empty database’
  • Name the database
  • In the first column, add each sub-page as a new entry.

You do not need to add any other columns/properties.

Why use a database?

You can create a gallery view of the database which displays your sub-pages as cards with cover images. This is visually pleasing and you can navigate to a sub-page by clicking on the relevant gallery image.

Example of a Resources Database in Gallery view.

Create a Gallery view of your database

Any database can be shown in gallery view, provided you have added cover images to each page.

  • Make sure that you have added a cover image to each sub-page.
  • Click the tab on your database labelled Table.
  • Click on Duplicate to create a copy on a second tab.
  • A box will appear. Rename the new Tab to Gallery.
  • Click on Layout and select the Gallery icon.

Recommended settings:

  • card preview = Page cover
  • card size = Small

Click outside the box to automatically save your changes.

You will now have two tabs in your database – one in Table view and the other in Gallery view.

More formatting tips for your Resources Page

Use a heading styles for each section. Then you can insert a Table of Contents to aid navigation within the page (type /toc).

Use Callout blocks to group common elements, such as your macro buttons. This makes it easier to copy and paste these blocks to other pages.

Use Toggle lists to collapse sections of text and reduce visual clutter — great for longer lists or instructions.

Add reusable checklists that can be easily copied and pasted to other pages in your workspace.

Example of a Callout block containing macro buttons. This is useful for copying all of the buttons in one click. You can also copy just one button by clicking to the left of it.

Add existing pages to your Resources Page

You may already have pages in your Notion workspace that should be sub-pages of your new Resources Page. You can move them to your Resources Page.

  • Open the page that you want to move.
  • Click on the 3 dots in the top-right corner and select ‘Move to’
  • Select your Resources Page if you are not using a database, or
  • Select your Resources Database if you are using one.

Add your Source Citations Database

If you have already set up your family history Source Citations Database, you have two options.

Option 1: Link it

  • Do not move it. Just add a link on your Resources Page to your Source Citations Database page.

Option 2: Make it a sub-page

  • Move your Source Citations Database to the Resources Page (see above).

While you could move the Source Citations Database into the Resources Database by first moving it to a new page, I advise against doing so. I suspect that it would upset relations between your Source Citations Database and your Research Notes Database.

A well-organised Resources Page in Notion can save you time, reduce clutter, and make your family history research more efficient and enjoyable. Keeping your checklists, templates and other tools in one dedicated place ensures that your genealogy workspace stays focused and easy to use.

If you are enjoying my articles, you may also enjoy my book – The Good Genealogist.

Sources and resources

Manage source citations in Notion

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Depending on the type of family history information you store in Notion, you may need to include source citations. Here is a discussion of how that could be achieved.

This is Post 8 in my Notion for Family History series.

Where should you store family history source citations?

Source citations should ideally be stored in the same place as the information that you extract from them. This assists in further research and documentation.

A lot of family history information is stored in family history software or online family tree, so it is logical to store your master list of source citations there.

However, some family history research is not documented in a family tree. If you store that research in Notion, then it would be good to store your citations for that research in Notion.

Family history research notes in Notion

Family history research in Notion requiring citations might include:

  • research notes about a place, theme, family or person
  • notes from a book, journal article, website
  • analytical notes
  • draft evidence summaries and evidence arguments
  • preparation for a lecture or workshop.

Citing sources in Notion

Unfortunately, even though it is a note-taking app, Notion does not provide a footnoting system. Footnotes have to be added manually.

The simplest approach to managing source citations in Notion is to include footnotes and a list of references on each Notes page.

Add the numbers manually at the end of a sentence and then type the citation in footnote format at the end of the Note.

The problem with this option is that each Note has its own set of citations.

Of course, you may have some Notes where all the information came from a single source. For example, notes from a book. For such Notes you may choose to add the citation as another column in your Notes Database. However, that does not work for Notes that draw on multiple sources.

Set up your Source Citations Database

You can collect all the source citations used within your Notion workspace in a Source Citations Database and ‘relate’ it to your Notes Database.

You will first need to set up your Foundational Databases, or, as a minimum, a Notes Database. Instructions provided in my article, Manage family history projects with Notion.

Instructions

Click on your Home Page under the title somewhere. Or, if you have already set up a Resources Page you could add the Source Citations Database on that Page.

Type /data and a list of database-type blocks will pop up. Choose the second one, Database – Full Page.

This will open up a new Page with an empty Database on it.

The light grey text on this new Database Page that says Untitled is both the name of the Page and the name of the Database. Click on it and name it Source Citations.

Hover your mouse above the title and click on the text that says Add icon. Click on the dot to choose a colour, then choose an icon for source citations. I just use the asterisk symbol.

Next you add columns to your Database.

Column 1 is automatically called Name. Change that to Title 1.

Add new columns (called Properties in Notion), by clicking on the + sign next to the existing column. The Property type determines the kind of data you can enter in that column and how it is formatted.

Add six columns, with the Text Property Type.

Column 2 – Rename the column as Short Citation.

Column 3 – Author

Column 4 – Location

Column 5 – Publisher

Column 6 – Year (note, do not choose date format as it does not allow you to just insert a year)

Add column 7, and choose Select as the Property Type. This allows you to type a list. Rename it to Tags or Keywords. You will be able to use this column to filter the database by the tags or keywords.

Add two more Text columns.

Column 8 – Title 2 (Some source types, such as journals or websites need two titles)

Column 9 – Full citation

Separating each part of the citation into a different column allows you to sort and filter by those columns, which you will find very useful. However, it is also useful to have a column containing the full citation for when you want to copy and paste it.

Every citation that you add to the Database will get its own Page, but you do not need to do anything further with these pages.

Connect it to your Notes Database

Open your Notes Database (click on link on your Home Page).

Add another column by clicking on the + sign in the header row of the Database. Choose Relation as the Property type. That will bring up a list of Databases that you have in your workspace. Choose Source Citations (your new database), then select Two-way Relation, and click the blue button labelled Add relation.

You have now related your Notes Database and your Source Citations Database to each other.

Assigning Notes to Source Citations

Although the two databases are related, you still need to assign a Note to a Citation.

In the Notes Database, click on the row for the relevant Note in the column labelled Source Citation. Search for the appropriate citation and select it.

Alternatively, in the Source Citations Database, click on the row for the relevant citation in the Notes column. Search for the appropriate Note and select it.

Example (extract, not all columns are shown)
Notes in the first column are assigned to the citations in the fifth column

You can assign multiple Citations to each Note, and have multiple Notes assigned to a Citation.

Assigning a Citation within a Note

The process described above only assigns a citation to a Notes page. It does not add the citation to a piece of information within the Note.

To assign a citation to a specific piece of information within a Note, you could:

  • Use footnotes and add a page link to the citation inside the footnote (see image below), or
  • Use the Harvard referencing style and put the Short Citation (Author, year) in brackets at the end of the sentence. This option does not add a page link, but I find it sufficient in most cases.
Example, manually added footnotes with page link to the Source Citations page.

Let me know if you try this out and have any suggestions for improving either the process or the instructions.

Sources and resources

Manage your family history blog using Notion

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Notion is a great project management tool. It is not just useful in planning your research, you can also use it to write articles about your research. Here are two ways that you can manage a family history blog using Notion.

You can use Notion to:

  • store a list of your family history blog post ideas
  • write the draft posts
  • gather images
  • plan and draft social media posts
  • track progress
  • store copies of the final blog post and links to social media posts.

The foundational databases provide the project management structure for all types of projects, including writing projects. You do not need to construct any additional databases. If you have not already set them up, instructions are provided here.

The four foundational databases are: Projects, Research Questions, Tasks and Notes.

Option 1: Website is the Project

Create a project for your website in the Projects Database.

You could use the Research Questions Database to list each blog post and link them to Tasks and Notes. However, I it may be less confusing if you create a Note for each blog post in the Notes Database and link them to the website Project.

I find it useful to use the title of the blog post as the title of the Note. The title of the Note can be amended as work progresses.

Family history blog post tasks

Create Tasks for each blog post for any actions that you want to track.

You could just have one Task – ‘write [title] blog post’. Or you could break the process down into multiple tasks, such as:

  • Research for [title] blog post
  • Prepare draft [title] blog post
  • Finalise [title] blog post
  • Create social media posts for [title] blog post.

Keep each Task title unique, as this will help you track progress in your linked databases. I do this by putting part of the blog post title in the task names (see [title] above).

Make sure that you link each Task to the Note for the relevant blog post. That will allow you to filter or sort your linked databases to show Tasks for a particular post.

Tracking progress on blog posts

If you choose to just have one Task for each blog post, consider adding a To Do checklist on the Notes pages to help you keep track of your work.

The Tasks Database is already set up with tools to mark individual tasks as completed. However, you also need a way to mark off a blog post as completed.

Add a checkbox property column to your Notes database, called Archived or Completed. Use it mark off a blog post Note after it has been published. You will not lose the archived Notes. They remain in your Notes database.

Create a linked view of your Notes database on the page for your website project. Instructions are provided in Plan your family history with Notion. Add a second tab with a copy of the database. On the first tab, add a filter so that it shows Notes that have not been archived. On the second tab, add a filter so that it shows Notes that have been archived, i.e. published blog posts.

Option 2: Each family history blog post is a Project

Another option is to create a new Project for each blog post. I personally prefer this option, but both work fine.

If you choose this option, you can use the Type property column in the Projects Database to identify all of the Projects that are blog posts. Just add another type, such as Blog post.

Then create Notes and Tasks for each blog post, similar to Option 1.

You will still need to add a checkbox to mark off completed posts, but for this option you would add it to your Projects Database instead of your Notes Database. I also added a Status property column to my Projects Database (see image below).

Extract from an example Projects Database, where each post is a Project.
Only one task is listed per project in this example, but you could have many.

More tips

Consider creating a template for your blog post Notes pages, to help you create quality blog posts. This could include headings such as topic, draft titles, opening paragraph, list of images, internal and external links.

Consider adding a checkbox property column to your Notes database and/or your Tasks database to identify Notes and/or Tasks that are related to blog posts. This will help you filter for all blog Notes and Tasks. You could also use a different icon on Notes and Tasks that are blog related.

Use a keywords property column in your Notes Database or Projects Database to record the subjects of each post. This will allow you to filter for posts on each subject and view how many blog posts you have written (or have planned) on a particular subject.

After you publish your blog post, add the URL to the Notes page for that post. You could also add a property column to your Projects Database (for Option 2) or your Notes Database (for Option 1) to store the link.

Back to the Notion main page on my website for more articles.