A funny, weird kind of funny, thing happened yesterday morning. My dear friend Francine made a “playing along” post on her Facebook page. It said:

I was born …
My mother was …
Her mother was …
Her father was …
My father was …
His mother was …
His father was …
And now I live in …

I responded that I was fairly straightforward, as all answers but my paternal grandfather would be Connecticut. That reminded me of my At-A-Glance Excel Pedigree Chart blog post, so at 9:51 a.m., I shared it with her. At 10:13, I saw my memories on Facebook for the day and guess what? I created that chart and shared it on Thursday, March 24, 2016. Exactly four years to the day later, it popped into my head just before it appeared on my timeline. Of course, I did not know that there was significance to the date. I was only prompted to think of it because of Francine.

I went back to look at the blog post and noticed that my friend Miss Peggy had posted a comment. Well, later on in the day, Miss Peggy shared on her Facebook timeline that she remembered when we all did charts and she filled in her boxes in a chart like the one I shared here, except she filled hers in with religions. What a wonderful adaptation!

Who do we have to thank for all of this? Our friend J. Paul Hawthorne, who started the craze. Now, I think we should officially call the week containing March 24th “Chart Your Ancestors Week!”

So, what’s been happening these past four years? My tree has had some changes. It has grown some branches and a branch has been trimmed off. DNA has caused some changes to my carefully constructed tree.

Miss Peggy asked whether the locations on the right align with the final box. In this case, I color-coded the box according to the last known individual in the line. This is meant to be an easily shareable visual tree for collaboration purposes. The lines that share X-DNA transmission potential are colored pink

Want to join me in celebrating Chart Your Ancestors Week? Feel free to use the template here as a starting point for a chart like the one above. You can find J. Paul Hawthorne’s Custom Five Generation Chart here.

Happy Ancestor Hunting!

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