Tag: timelines

Advice, Methodology

Create a Genealogy Timeline with AI: Getting Started

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Timelines are essential in family history research, but creating them manually is time-consuming. You need to gather data, enter it into tables, and organise everything chronologically.

AI can help with this process. It extracts data from your family history documents, analyses it, creates tables, and orders events by date.

I’ve tested this approach to discover what works and what doesn’t. This post shares my findings and shows you how to get started with simple genealogy timelines. Later posts will examine more complex timelines for research problem solving and discuss in more detail how to optimise the prompt and input data for best results.

Why Use Genealogy Timelines

Timelines place people in time and space. They help you:

  • Clarify identities and solve research problems
  • Expose gaps and inconsistencies in your data
  • Organise information for better research planning
  • Create engaging family narratives.

If you’re not using timelines yet, read my article Use Genealogy Timelines to Organise, Analyse and Improve Your Research for a discussion of the benefits and uses for genealogy timelines.

The Timeline Problem

Online family trees and family history software create limited timelines. You might get a timeline for one person with their immediate family, but events for the family are limited to birth and death. The format is usually PDF-only, which means no editing in Excel.

This limits their value for family history research. You have limited control over what data gets included and can’t make adjustments afterward.

Creating custom timelines manually means extracting data from your software, entering it into spreadsheets, and organising it chronologically. It’s tedious work that’s prone to errors.

What AI Can Do for Timeline Creation

AI excels at three key tasks:

  1. Extract data from documents and format it into tables
  2. Organise events chronologically to create proper timelines
  3. Convert results into Excel-compatible formats.

AI can also provide historical context and suggest research directions, but I’ll focus on the core timeline creation process here.

Before You Start: Essential Preparation

Protect Privacy First

Always exclude living people from any data you share with AI tools. Check your software settings and review reports to ensure no personal information about yourself or living relatives gets included.

In Legacy Family Tree, you can suppress the names of living people or exclude them totally.

Decide Your Timeline Content and Format

Consider what information you need:

  • Dates: Full dates or years only? How should approximate dates (abt. 1832) or spans (1841-1844) be handled?
  • Events: Birth, death, marriage are standard, but baptism and burial are useful too. Include residence, or occupation events?
  • Names: Full names in one column or separate surname column?
  • Locations: Complete location in one column or split into separate columns?
  • Citations: Useful, but I left them out in these simple timelines.

I also recommend including a unique identifier column to distinguish between people with the same name.

For more tips on genealogy timelines, see my article Excel Genealogy Timelines: Complete How To Guide.

Testing Different AI Tools and Formats

I tested three AI tools with different document formats:

AI Tools Tested:

  • ChatGPT 4o (paid)
  • Google Gemini 2.0 (free)
  • Claude Sonnet (paid)

Document Formats Tested:

  • Ancestry individual profiles (PDF and text)
  • Legacy Family Tree individual reports (PDF)
  • Legacy Family Tree family group sheets (PDF)

The Prompt That Works

Here’s the prompt I developed through testing:

‘Please extract all birth, baptism, marriage, death, burial, and residence events from the following report. Include only events where dates and locations are explicitly stated – no assumptions. Present results in a table with four columns: Date, Type of Event, Location, and Name of the Person. Sort chronologically by date. Omit any index or row numbers. If a date is approximate (e.g. ‘Abt.’, ‘Bef.’, ‘After’), retain the original text but sort chronologically based on interpreted value.’

For software-generated reports with unique identifiers, I added:

‘Please add another column called RIN. This is the unique identifier number for a person. You will find that number in square brackets after a person’s name. Add the RIN for each person in this new column.’

Results: What Worked and What Didn’t

Document TypeChatGPT 4oGoogle GeminiClaude Sonnet
Ancestry Individual profile PDFFailed100% Success100% Success
Ancestry Individual profile Text100% SuccessNot testedNot tested
Legacy Individual profile PDF100% Success100% Success100% Success
Legacy Family Sheet PDF100% Success100% Success100% Success

Key Findings:

Format matters. Image-based PDF documents and PDF documents from web pages (like Ancestry) can be problematic. They can be difficult to search; have overlapping elements or graphics; and may include OCR (Optical Character Recognition) text that is less accurate. ChatGPT struggled with these and could only interpret the data when it was converted to text format by copying and pasting.

John Beaumont has a great video about PDF issues and AI, if you need to know more.

Structure helps. Reports from family history software work best because they’re already consistently formatted.

Instructions are crucial. AI tools interpreted standard events (birth, death, marriage) accurately but needed guidance with residence events that appeared in different formats.

Example additional guidance provided:

‘You have not listed any residence events. I think you had trouble because they have been expressed in a few different ways. There are events in the document that say ‘resided at [address] in [year] in [location]’; others say ‘had a residence in [year] in [location]’. Can you see if you can extract those ones and add them to the timeline?’

Google Gemini performed particularly well, correctly interpreting events as residence events even where the word residence was not mentioned. For example, it assumed that a religion event with a date and location indicated residence.

Quality Control: Review Your Results

Always check AI-generated timelines, even when they look perfect. Common issues include:

  • Minor errors: Events slightly out of chronological order
  • Major errors: Missing events, wrong people, or invented information.
Extract from a timeline created by ChatGPT. The family never left Essex England yet has events in Australia and Kent. Elizabeth Rice is fictional and the events are not sorted chronologically.

ChatGPT’s failure with the Ancestry PDF was spectacular. It invented people, changed locations, and created fictional events and people. When I pointed out errors, it created even more problems. This shows why testing different AI tools matters.

Quick Tips for Success

  1. Start simple with individual or family group reports
  2. Use structured data from family history software when possible
  3. Test different AI tools if one doesn’t work well
  4. Review results carefully before using the timeline
  5. Refine your prompt based on your specific data format.

What’s Next

Simple timelines work well with AI, but what about complex family research? In Complex Genealogy Timelines with AI, I explore multi-generational timelines and solving the errors that arise with more complex data.

The key takeaway: AI can dramatically speed up creation of genealogy timelines, but success depends on preparation, the right tools, and careful review of results.

About the Author

Danielle Lautrec is a genealogy educator, researcher, and author of The Good Genealogist. With qualifications in history, family history, and historical archaeology, she teaches for the Society of Australian Genealogists.

Sources and resources

Best tools for creating genealogy timelines: A comparison

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Your ancestors’ lives span decades and centuries, but family trees charts cannot adequately capture the chronology of their experiences. Genealogy timelines enrich family history research, revealing how historical events shaped your family’s journey, and uncovering patterns that traditional charts miss entirely.

Genealogy timeline tools range from basic spreadsheet templates to sophisticated diagramming software. The variety of timeline tools can overwhelm researchers trying to choose the right solution.

This comparison cuts through the confusion, evaluating seven leading tools across two crucial categories: creating beautiful illustrative timelines for sharing your discoveries, and building powerful analytical timelines for serious genealogical research.

Please note: This article reflects my personal opinions based on my experience. Your preferences may differ depending on your research style, budget and familiarity with software.

First, consider the purpose of your timeline and your audience

Before choosing a tool, think about what you want to achieve with your timeline. Ask yourself: is your timeline for illustration or analysis?

  • Illustrative timelines are used to clearly display or summarise information. They are useful for presentations, reports or sharing with family.
  • Analytical timelines help you test hypotheses, identify inconsistencies and evaluate evidence. They are useful for research planning, DNA analysis and problem solving.

Your choice of a timeline tool also depends on your audience. Family and friends will probably prefer illustrative timelines, while analytical timelines are more suited to other genealogists.

The right timeline tool depends on your goals, audience, budget and comfort with software. Here is my comparison, to help you make your decision.

Quick overview: Timeline tools at a glance

ToolBest forCostComplexity level
SpreadsheetsDeep analysis, data comparisonFreeLow-Medium
NotionResearch planning, linked notesFree/PaidMedium
SmartArtQuick simple illustrationsFree with OfficeLow
SmartDrawBasic diagramsPaidMedium
VisioCustom diagramsPaidMedium-Difficult
LucidchartProfessional illustrationsPaidMedium
Family history softwareIndividual timelinesFree/PaidLow

Comparison of timeline tools

Spreadsheets, such as Excel, Airtable & Google Sheets

Best for: Deep analysis, sorting, filtering, comparisons

Assessment: Spreadsheets are one of the best tools for genealogy timelines. They allow detailed, flexible analysis using features like sorting, filtering and hiding columns. The formatting features allow you to illustrate your timeline in different views. You can use built-in templates or build from scratch. Easily modified and you can store multiple timelines on different worksheets within a spreadsheet.

Learning curve: Low-Medium. You only need to learn a few features and basic formatting

Availability: Free with Microsoft Office; Airtable has a free plan; Google Sheets is free with a Google account

Verdict: Ideal for analytical tasks. Handles a lot of data. Familiar and powerful, while still being quite simple to use.

Extract from an analytical timeline in Excel, containing information about when my family lines arrived in Australia

Notion

Best for: Master timelines, linking events to research notes and research plans

Assessment: Notion uses databases, making it a flexible tool for capturing timeline data with context. It’s not designed for diagrams, but the table view can be customised to show events by person, place, or date. Data can easily be rearranged using sorting and filtering.

Learning curve: Medium.Learn how in my article, How to build a timeline in Notion (with linked views)

Availability: Free for individuals; paid plans for teams

Verdict: Excellent if you already use Notion for research notes and research planning. Less suited to complex analytical tasks.

SmartArt (Word & PowerPoint)

Best for: Simple illustrative timelines

Assessment: SmartArt is a quick way to create basic timelines. You just insert a Process diagram into Word or PowerPoint. Limited in customisation and not suited to analysis, but perfect for simple illustrative timelines.

Learning curve: Low

Availability: Free with Microsoft Office

Verdict: Handy for quick visuals and beginner-friendly.

Simple illustrative genealogy timeline, shown as an arrow with events marked on it. Created using SmartArt
Simple illustrative timeline created using SmartArt

SmartDraw

Best for: Simple illustrative diagrams and bar charts (Gantt-style, showing the duration of an event)

Assessment: Offers horizontal and table formats, with templates for quick setup. You can customise text, colours, and add images. Suited for illustrative purposes, not complex analytical timelines. Produces good quality images for inclusion in presentations or reports.

Learning curve: Medium, but easier if you are familiar with the software or similar tools

Availability: Free trial; subscription required for ongoing use

Verdict: Suitable for presentations. Subscription cost is hard to justify if timelines are your only use.

Visio

Best for: Simple illustrative flowcharts and diagrams, including timelines

Assessment: The desktop version is more customisable than SmartDraw. Like SmartDraw, you can customise text, colours, and add images. Suited for illustrative purposes, not complex analytical timelines.

Learning curve: More difficult than SmartDraw

Availability: Basic version included with Microsoft 365 business; full version is a paid app

Verdict: A mid-tier option—more flexible than SmartArt, less than Excel or Lucidchart. Good if you already have access.

Lucidchart

Best for: Both illustrative and analytical timelines, where customisation is important

Assessment: Offers vertical, horizontal, Gantt and bar chart timeline templates. Highly customisable with colour coding, shapes and labels. Strong contender for both illustrative and analytical needs.

Learning curve: Medium. Learning the features and processes takes a little while, but step-by-step instructions are provided

Availability: Free trial; subscription required

Verdict: One of the most versatile options. Worth if you need complex visuals or also want to create family tree diagrams. Easy to insert a Lucidchart into a Word document or PowerPoint presentation.

Genealogy timeline in a horizontal line format with key events for a couple, from Lucidchart
Example of a simple illustrative timeline in Lucidchart. Many more formats are available.

Family history software

Best for: Simple timelines for an individual, not requiring customisation

Assessment: Limited to events of an individual within the context of their immediate family. Very little customisation available. Easy to incorporate into a report generated by the software.

Learning curve: None, the timeline is generated automatically as you enter data to your family tree

Availability: Included in all family history software. Some, such as Legacy Family Tree, are free.

Verdict: Very useful for day-to-day research and simple illustrative timelines in reports. Limited value for complex analysis.

Example of a genealogy timeline in Legacy Family Tree Software, showing four columns: Age, Event, Date, Information
Example of a timeline in Legacy Family Tree Software.
Tip: Change to Report style then copy and paste the data into a spreadsheet if you want to add or amend the data.

Final thoughts

From my experience, three tools emerge as the clear winners for different genealogy scenarios. Spreadsheets excel at analytical work. Their sorting, filtering, and comparison capabilities make them the most powerful choice for serious research. Lucidchart takes the stands out for visual presentation, offering professional-quality timelines to enrich your family history. For quick, everyday use, SmartArt provides the perfect balance of simplicity and effectiveness.

My recommendation? Start with Excel to build your analytical skills and understanding of timeline creation. Once you’re comfortable with the fundamentals, add Lucidchart for when you need to create impressive visuals for sharing. This two-tool approach covers 90% of genealogy timeline needs while keeping costs reasonable and learning curves manageable.

Learn more about using genealogy timelines in my article, Use Genealogy Timelines to Organise, Analyse and Improve Your Research

For more articles about resources and tools for family history, go to the Resources page.

For more of my articles about using Excel for family history, go to the Using Excel page.

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.