Read Dates, Lifelines and Historical Context

Person life events accept full dates, month/year and year-only values in the collection’s date format. Keep uncertainty visible: do not enter 1 January merely to fill a missing day or month. An as-recorded field can preserve wording from a source. A missing death date does not by itself establish that someone is living.

The chronological charts distinguish recorded endpoints, partial-date ranges, known living status, dated evidence and unknown continuation. An eligible dated photograph or event can show that a person was known alive at that time; it is not a death date. Undated people may be unplaced or ordered from related chronology without gaining a recorded birth date.

Estimate missing birth placement (parent age 20) permits a chart-only positioning estimate. It neither discovers a birth date nor updates the Person. In Relationship Timeline, a missing wedding date can place a join one year before the earliest readable shared child’s birth. That is a geometry assumption, not a recorded wedding date.

Historical periods are definitions you enter yourself. The six types are War, Political regime, Migration, Epidemic, Economic change and Personal era. Enter a title and valid start/end dates, and choose Show for each period. Overlaps are allowed. Incomplete or invalid periods remain available for correction but are not drawn; the editor is limited to 40 rows.

Timeline layouts display period bands. Radial can show a context legend; Branching Tree and Map do not display periods. A period is contextual information, not proof of someone’s military service, illness, beliefs or travel. Save periods updates the Family Tree draft; save the collection to persist it.

Practice with Add Dates and Historical Context.