Haley Timeline

Previously I posted about use of timeline to gain a better perspective on an ancestor's life.  Using a timeline of an ancestor usually provides new ideas to further my research.  Above is the timeline I recently made for my great-great grandfather William H Haley. It is a bit hard to read, but you get the gist of it.  It is very simple.  I used a piece of white paper, a ruler and a pencil.  I plotted his birth, marriage and death dates first.  I then plotted his location during the census years of his lifetime. Under the census years, I note his age at the time of the census.  Immediately by doing this, I realized William did not move to Charlotte County, VA until the 1920's.  He was in his 60's at this point. While I always thought of him as living most of his life in Charlotte County, VA, he actually lived most of his life in Clarkton, Halifax County, VA.

Two new ideas for research have emerged at this point:

1. Locate the deed for the land bought in Charlotte County, VA (1920's)
2. Follow up on his years in Clarkton, Halifax, VA (Oral history tells me he was the overseer for Clarkton Plantation.)

I then began to plot the births of his children.  It became obvious that all of the children were born in Halifax County.  What also appeared more graphically, was the spacing between the children.  Most of the children were born fairly close together, but there are larger gaps.  Could this account for the 12 children oral history tells me there were?

Another area of research:

1. Follow up on the discrepancy in the number of children born to Will and Clara Haley. Are there church records or a family Bible with information on the family?

At the bottom of the page is a "pull out" from the Will's timeline that I wanted to look at more closely.  I wanted to look at the years 1910 - 1920 specifically.  I was looking for the locations of Will's married children in relation to his location.  I'm still researching this, however the married children I have looked at so far are in close proximity to Will and Clara.

In this case, the timeline was not used to break through a brick wall, but to fill in my ancestors lives.  Put together with other known facts from my previous research and with oral interviews of family, I have a much better understanding of who Will and Clara were.