Family sparklines

I’ve been thinking more about genealogy sparklines. Decided to pick up the recent work I did in that vein and make it work for families, for use in my new family sheets. This also riffs off my old family analysis project.

Introducing the first draft of family sparklines:

(At this point are they really still sparklines, you ask? Good question.)

These families are from my Spanish line, by the way, which is why there is an abundance of initials.

Basic idea: larger hollow circles are marriages, smaller filled circles are children. Vertical marks at beginning or end for birth and death. (If the vertical tick isn’t present, the birth or death date isn’t known.) Father at the top of the chart, mother at the bottom, children in the middle. Vertical line from father to mother for the parents’ marriage. In cases where the marriage isn’t known (like in the bottom right MA/CS family), the vertical line and circles are left out. People’s initials are at the right to help know who is who. The smaller vertical tick marks on each line mark ten years of age. If there isn’t a death date, it goes five years past the last known date.

It’s still a work in progress, but I like how it provides an at-a-glance overview of a family. With the JAFF/MGC family in the upper left, for example, I can easily see that:

• The parents were alive for all three marriages of their children and most of the grandkids’ births
• They had five children die young
• I don’t have a marriage or death for MFG
• I haven’t found any children for MLFG

You can also see a child born before the wedding, how old people were when they married, gaps where there might have been children, etc.

I’m sure I’ll refine it further in the future, but I wanted to post where it’s at right now.