Key:
Green: Mother’s maternal ancestors
Red: Mother’s paternal ancestors
Black: Father’s maternal ancestors
Blue: Father’s paternal ancestors
Script Font: Country of birth
Regular Font: Family name of ancestor and date of immigration
Font Size: Largest fonts represent parents, fonts decrease in size for prior generations
I then arranged the names and places artistically rather than chronologically. If a last name is taken by a spouse at marriage (common in many English –speaking countries historically) then I didn’t repeat the name. Similarly, for Spanish surnames, to allow for space, I didn’t repeat the paternal surnames. This greatly reduces the number of names that need to be included and allows more names to be readable.
Similarly I didn’t repeat countries of birth. I included the name of any country in which at least one of my ancestors was born, but I only included each country once, even if 4 great great grandparents and 2 grandparents were born there. To visually identify that multiple families originated in a particular country, I used more than one color in the country’s name. For instance, to show that my mother’s dad and my father’s dad came from Italy, I would write Italy with both blue and red font. I adjusted this technique to show balance in the numbers of ancestors coming from multiple family branches. For instance, if many of my father’s maternal ancestors came from Russia and one of my mother’s paternal ancestors came from Russia, then I might write Russia all in black with just one letter red.
I also included the dates of immigration to our current country of residence. The dates next to the names in the generic ancestry map shown here, correspond to the year that name or branch of the family immigrated; they are not meant to represent the date for that particular individual. In the case of many ancestors having come to your country a long time ago, many of the names would include dates. On the other extreme, if your parents were born abroad and you immigrated to your country then none of the names shown would have dates included. In such a case, I would include the date of immigration in a large font prominently in the center of the map.
Modify and adjust to suit your family’s structure. Country names, immigration dates, surnames can all be adjusted in color, type and size to reflect a multitude of ancestry information. Perhaps you want to include common first names or employment industry or number of siblings. Select the attributes that are most important for your family and then modify the fonts to reflect those attributes.
My daughters suggested increasing the transparency as you travel back in time through the names, so that the great great great grandparents names would be quite faded. Just beware of attempting to capture too much information as having more than 4 or 5 attributes may only serve to overwhelm and confuse whoever is reading your ancestry map.
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