Kathy’s Corner » Exploring Our Mystery Photos, Part 4: Timelines » April 2025

As Projectkin, we’re hooked on family history stories. So often, these stories start with the artifacts, documents, and photographs left for us by our ancestors. In Kathy’s Corner, Kathy Stone, Projectkin member and long-time contributor, helps us sort through and make sense of these materials with insights learned in decades of experience as a professional photo organizer. Explore recordings of past episodes here, and our calendar for coming events here.

Learn more at Projectkin.org/about, and join the conversation and inspiration — free!

Our discussion today built on a challenge Kathy introduced in January 2025 related to the mystery photos in everyone’s collections. In parts 1-3, Kathy stepped through different ways to explore our photos using:

* Knowledge about photography technologies, and photographers (part 1);

* Information about physical elements of photos (part 2); and

* Elements captured in the photograph (part 3).

⮕ Here are links to those first three parts:

Today, we turned to timelines as an external tool to use to explore our photo collection. As you’ll see in the discussion and resources below, this led to an inspiring conversation about new ways to tell stories.

Resources for Timelines in Family Photo Organizing

Templates & Tools

Cyndi’s List

* www.cyndislist.com/timelines

* www.cyndislist.com/timelines/templates

Family Tree Magazine

* familytreemagazine.com/research/genealogy-timeline

Ancestories: Stories of My Ancestors Miriam Robbins

* ancestories1.blogspot.com/2014/02/tuesdays-tip-timelines.html

How to Create a Timeline in Excel by John Wittwer

* www.vertex42.com/ExcelArticles/create-a-timeline.html

Grid Timeline or Research Logs

Goldenrod Genealogy

* goldenrodgenealogy.com/timeline_grid.htm

Interactive Timeline

Northwestern University Knight Lab

* From the Knight Lab program for journalists at Northwestern: Knightlab.northwestern.edu, specifically the TimelineJS tool, timeline.knightlab.com

This TimelineJS tool was the basis for the Lafayette Timeline Project Recipe from April 2025 and includes templates for using TimelineJS.

Projectkin is all about our members, family historians hooked on stories. We’re on a mission to help families tell their stories in any way that works for them. Preserve your family archive and share the stories that make it so important. Tap below to join us for our May program at Kathy’s Corner.

Family history is a team sport; why not share this recording with your family and friends? More at Projectkin.org/about<