Thanks to J. Paul Hawthorne for creating this idea that went viral in the genealogy world the past two days. While I’m a day behind others, I still wanted to share this great idea with all of you.
The idea is to create a spreadsheet chart showing birth places for our ancestors. It’s been a lot of fun to see everyone’s colorful charts and see all the various locations.
Here’s the link for the Five Generation template to create your own chart. AND, thanks to Pat Richley-Erickson (Dear Myrtle) we also have a Six Generation template to play with.
Here they are. Both my birthplace chart and my husband’s.
You can clearly see the Michigan theme in mine, as well as Scotland and Ireland. Those red blanks are the brick walls.
Here is my husband’s chart. New York and Pennsylvania stand out. But even more startling when you see it in living color is all the red on his mother’s side. I’ve worked and worked on locating those families, but have had no luck thus far.
Thanks again to J. Paul Hawthorne for this wonderful exercise.
Happy hunting,
Michigan Girl
Copyright © 2010-2016 Diane Gould Hall
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION
Great color charts, Diane! Love them! Thanks for the shout out!
ReplyDeleteYou're very welcome Paul. What a wonderful idea you had. How much fun did we all have with this? A LOT! And how many other ways can we think to use this format? A LOT!!
DeleteThat's so neat! Love it! I made one, but can't figure out how to change my Excel photo into an image I can post on my blog. Can you talk me through it? Or maybe it'd be different on blogger. Anyway, neat idea!
ReplyDeleteDana - Sorry for the delay in answering. I made an image by going to Print Preview and then I printed it to Adobe, then changed it from PDF to JPG. You could probably also grab a screenshot while you are in print preview, if you don't have Adobe Professional.
DeleteThanks for stopping by.
It is amazing how fun a simple exercise like this was! I did it too and was surprised by the questions it generated in my mind. You certainly do have history in Michigan!
ReplyDeleteHi Michelle,
DeleteI was so glad Paul thought of doing this. I agree with you about the questions. It certainly made me see migration patterns and those red spots where the brick walls were jumped right out at me.
Thanks for leaving a comment.