Quick Tip: Create Your Personal History Timeline - The Birthday Edition 🥳
Today is my 50th birthday! 🎉 It is incredible how time flies! I’m truly humbled by all that I have had to date and all the remains ahead of me. ❤️
In the spirit of my milestone birthday, I am sharing a quick tip for one way we can easily document some of our own personal history. As genealogists, we spend so much time researching those that are no longer with us, that we can benefit from taking pause to tell our own history as well.
QUICK TIP: take one of your milestone birthdays and make a brief timeline synopsis of a notable memory at 5-year increments in your own family history. Include pictures! I was able to make mine in less than 30 minutes and at the end of this post I will share the details about a class I’m holding to teach you photo organization tips that will help you do the same.
My brief timeline looks like this:
1975 (age 0) - no memories; I’m brand new to the world! The first born child of my parents, who were living in New York at the time.
1980 (age 5) - this year, I started Kindergarten and my family had moved to Greensboro, North Carolina and I now have a younger brother. I had a *boyfriend* at school - his name was Kenny and he had two girlfriends, me and Tiffany. Oh the drama at such a young age 😄
1985 (age 10) - I’m in the 5th grade this year, my sister gets born and one of my favorite memories is a playmate at our apartment complex who only spoke Arabic, no English - spoiler alert, I don’t speak Arabic. But, we played together all the time and taught each other basic vocabulary; kids will always find a way, won’t they?
1990 (age 15) - my parents had divorced and I was in the 10th grade in Charlotte, North Carolina. I vividly remember how the cast of Beverly Hills 90210 had the same chemistry textbook that I did - I got the biggest kick out of that!
1995 (age 20) - junior year of college at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. During this year, had such a fantastic Alternative Spring Break trip experience in the mountains of North Carolina!
2000 (age 25) - I’ve finished grad school at UNC-Chapel Hill and my first year of fellowship at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland. In 2000, I moved to Nashville, Tennessee and started my next internship experience at the Eskind Biomedical Library at Vanderbilt University.
2005 (age 30) - Whoa! I’m a married woman now with 5 children (bonus mom to 4 boys + my biological daughter). At this age, I temporarily moved to Memphis, Tennessee for 1 year while hubby finished up his service in the Navy.
2010 (age 35) - more school you say? I obtained my 2nd Masters degree - a Masters in Public Health from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
2015 (age 40) - this year, had such a fun road trip with my daughter as we traveled to the Outer Banks in North Carolina! On the way back home, I took her to my maternal grandmother’s hometown (Plymouth, NC) to show her some family history spots and then we went to my father’s hometown (Fort Barnwell, NC) for a family reunion!
2020 (age 45) - celebrating my birthday in the midst of a worldwide pandemic - what a change of life we all experienced! I also started my Academy of Legacy Leaders online community and really began to connect with even more fellow family history enthusiasts.
2025 (age 50) - and today, I am 50 - celebrating all that I’ve been fortunate to accomplish so far and excited for what is to come. The kids are all grown, my career is going well, and I’ve had some fantastic genealogy experiences.
Making this timeline was fun and fortunately, easy to do as I have a well-organized family history archive I’ve been maintaining for the past several years.
TAKE ACTION: At the end of the month, I am holding a workshop with tips and info on how you can also set up a family history archive that is permanent, well-organized, and can be privately and easily shared with family and loved ones. I will share more details later on the date and time, but reply to this post/email to let me know if you’re interested in getting early access to the details!
Happy Birthday, Taneya! It's lovely to welcome you into this second half-century of life. 🎂🎊
I absolutely love this approach and could see making it a family tradition. What a useful way to capture family photos by year, too!
It's probably only a matter of time before AI can migrate facial recognition technologies to pair age-defined photos with the rest of your collection and put everyone's photos in age-determined order. Wouldn't that be useful?
I remember how our daughters' Montessori school used to have a birthday ritual that required parents to bring best photos from each year of life. Now... where'd I put those... 🤔
Love this! Adding thumbnail memories is brilliant.