There’s a fun idea making the rounds of twitter and genealogy blogs in the last week or so. It started with a tweet by David Allen Lambert (@DLGenealogist) who sketched a pedigree with his ancestors’ ages at death on the back of a napkin.
I first read about it on the Genealogical Gems blog. Jeanne, the Genealogical Gems author, added cause of death to her longevity chart. I was captivated by such a simple, but revealing idea.
It took just a few minutes for me to grab a scrap of paper out of the recycling bin and sketch my own. It’s not the most beautiful document, but I didn’t get all perfectionistic about it. Here it is (click the image to get a better view):
It was a fun and useful exercise. Here are some of the things it revealed to me:
- My people tended to live a long time. (But I knew that already.)
- My ancestors tended to die from disease or old age, not accidents.
- I have Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and stroke on both sides of the family (though I bet that’s not too unusual).
- I haven’t noted the cause of death for a good number of my ancestors.
- I have yet to discover an ancestor who died in war.
- I have more death certificates to find!
I’m glad that David Lambert’s simple idea has become so popular, because I really enjoyed making mine!
Have you made a longevity pedigree? If so, what did it reveal?
I made an Excel file, in which I just need to paste the “SOSA” and “longevity” data (that can easily be exported from Heredis) in two colums, so I can visualize it easily.
Here is the result for my ancestors : http://hpics.li/da240fd . I need to find more death certificates to complete it and see if some trends appear, but I’m working on it.
(This file can also be useful to visualize how many brothers/sisters each ancestor had ; the age of each ancestor when he got married ; and maybe later the distance between his birthplace and his wedding place …)
Janine,
I want to let you know that your blog post is listed in today’s Fab Finds post at http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2016/03/follow-friday-fab-finds-for-march-4-2016.html
Have a great weekend!
P.S. I made a similar chart in 2013. The idea was from a blog post by Nathan Murphy in the FamilySearch blog. Here’s my chart. I need to update it though. 🙂
http://janasgenealogyandfamilyhistory.blogspot.com/2013/11/death-causes-pedigree-chart.html
Thanks, Jana! And thanks for sharing your chart. It’s much neater than mine. 🙂
I’m always interested to know how my ancestors died, and to consider how that may, or may not, apply to me and my family. But I never thought to make a longevity pedigree!
It’s a great idea, isn’t it?