Is there any way to geo-locate your entire family tree?

Question

Hi all.

I knew before I entered the first name on my family tree there was substantial pedigree collapse along the way, but what I didn't account for was just how quickly family lines became concentrated into small geographic areas (specifically Essex, Middlesex and Worcester counties in Mass and Cheshire and Hillsborough counties in NH.)

Is there any way to actually MAP your family tree to create a visual representation of areas of concentration and outliers using WikiTree?  I've looked and haven't seen this option, but thought maybe I was just overlooking it.  I really would love to be able to do this.

Thanks!

Muirae

Answer 1

If you could create a list (output file or spreadsheet) showing the name, birth location, death location, marriage location and generation, the you might be able to use a GIS program to put dots color coded by generation on a map.  This would be interesting to see how descendants of an Ancestor migrated.  There are some free GIS programs out there, I used to use so one called Geocommons.

Comments

I'll have to keep that program in my notes and work on making this project a reality on our next snowy day.   Thanks for the suggestion.

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It looks like geocommons went away but there is a really easy to use mapping program at this address:

https://www.mapcustomizer.com/

You can enter the address one at a time or do a bulk upload.   You can save it and export it as a pdf, too.

Answer 2

Your idea of mapping your family tree geographically, Muirae, is one which I share. But from the outset I must make clear that I haven't yet discovered a satisfactory solution. Maybe others will have the ability and knowledge to enlighten us.

At first glance it seems a simple matter to overlay names and dates on a map. One difficulty which soon arises though is the sheer concentration of information. Even if dates and relationships are omitted, one can imagine the size of a list of names of an 'average' family of two parents and four children, if it's to be legible, to be at minimum 2cm². No problem - one could use a pop-out flag which opens when you hover a cursor over it. That works, unless the family moves.

Movement of people is the next difficulty. Even in the most steady of communities, children grow to adulthood, marry, and leave the parental home to make new homes of their own. On a static map as proposed above, this would require more than one marker for an individual who moved - one for each location, presumably with some kind of link, perhaps a colour code for family group and a symbol to indicate the individual. It's not impossible, but if we consider a tree of several generations, it soon becomes rather busy.

My own original desire was to map the peregrinations of my wife's ancestors, who were itinerant navvies following their work constructing canals, roads, railways and other projects over almost two centuries. That map would need to cover most of England and Ireland, with children born in many locations along the way, brought up in multiple locations, finding partners as they travelled, some settling, some following onward in the same profession. I realised finally that the best kind of visual representation of my wife's family tree, and perhaps any family tree, would be some kind of animated map, where time and movement of individuals could easily be indicated by, say, movement of symbols, and time (on a compressed scale).

It is still an ambition of mine to produce such an animated "living map" of a family tree, but I haven't yet found the best way to do it. I hope that you can find a solution which suits your own purpose.

Best Regards

Dave