Creating Ancestor Pages

This week I'm teaching a Project Life app class to a group of church ladies, and besides teaching them the basics of using the Project Life app, I thought that I would also mention that you can create ancestor pages, using your genealogy research as the backbone.

Here's a page I worked up for my father, but can easily see expanding it to include other more distant ancestors as well. I'll walk through my though process and show you the steps to do it as I go.

Let's start with the "finished" product. I use the quotes because I always tend to go back and monkey with things after I think I'm done!

I've X'd out years for a little security, not that identity thieves are wasting time trolling my scrapbooking blog! LOL

I used the Squared Away 1 template,  because I wanted to show a bunch of photos from different ages. But it's probably safe to say, that the farther back the ancestor, the less photos you'll have. So here are a couple of different options for templates you can use, based on keeping the style of the four blocks of text information, but having options for photos.

So let's just talk through the creation of the page (skipping over the photo pockets, as those are pretty self explanatory) This is just the way that I've chosen to document ancestor pages. Feel free to adapt according to the information you have available, or what you want to include on your pages. We'll work our way around the pockets clock-wise.

Top left pocket:

• Last name of the individual in a large font
• Names of the individual's parents

Top right pocket:

• First and middle names of the individual
• Individual's relationship to you

Bottom right pocket:

• List of the individual's siblings (this is something that I think is missing from a lot genealogy info sheets that I've come across--not that I'm super familiar with genealogy)
• List of the individual's children

Bottom left pocket:

• Birth date and location of the individual
• Marriage date, location and name of spouse
• Date date and location

Additional things you can consider adding to the page:

• If you have fewer pictures, but more information, you could maybe use a different template, such as Design W above, and use one of the larger pockets to write your memories, or interesting facts about the individual (military service, favorite things, accomplishments, stories, etc.)
• If you have a photo of their gravestone, childhood home, certificates (marriage, birth, death), awards, etc. you could put those in one of the photo pockets 

HELPFUL TIP:
Once you have created your first page, you can use the Duplicate page option in the Project Life app to make a second copy of the page, and then just go in and swap out the information for the new family member, without having to realign your text or re-figure out your font sizes.

To duplicate a page:

1. In  the Project Life app, open your completed page and click the Export button (bottom right corner).

2. Then tap the Duplicate Page option.
   
   
   

You will now have two copies of the page within the Project Life app! Keep one as a finished product and use the other as a template for making future pages!

And there you have it, a quick and in my opinion, far-more-interesting-to-look-at (as compared to a simple genealogy chart or family tree) page about your ancestor/family member.

Let me know in the comments what you've done/plan to do to document your family history!