Family gatherings

[trlvn]

So we had a birthday party for an older cousin of mine that included a few branches of my Mom’s family. Family history questions have come up in the past and, at the last minute, I decided that I wanted to take a couple of Gramps reports in case anyone was interested.

I took a Kinship Report for the guy having the birthday. For parameters, I took it back to his g-grandparents and down to his grandchildren. That seemed to work pretty well in that it covered everybody who showed up at the gathering plus a couple of older generations that are now gone but well-remembered by those present.

But it would be so much more interesting to folks if pictures were included. We really are visual creatures.

I also took a Fan Chart showing ancestors out to 6 generations. Because I printed it with a different colour for each generation, it caught people’s eyes but several people were unfamiliar with a fan chart and I had to explain multiple times what it was showing. Also, since I don’t have a lot of info on my cousin’s Mother’s side of the family, a large portion of the fan chart was just blank. I did get the name of a relative on that side that has collected their family history but it really isn’t a research interest of mine.

Again, there were no pictures and I think that showing people’s faces would have drawn more people in.

What do the rest of you do? Are there any standard Gramps reports that are particularly good for sharing when the clan gathers?

Thanks,

Craig

[Bernard]

I used Family Lines Graph on a 5 meter roll

[hewettp]

I have often used a relationship graph on A0 or A1 sized paper. Run the graph horizontally to fit the names on better. This size paper can fit up to around 800 persons.
The relationship graph is very good for showing ancestors on both sides of the family, with all the cousins, etc.
There is an option to include images of people.

[tbsprs]

Here is what I came up with in the beginning of 2022:

Printable visualization of the complete family tree

My procedure is to designate a start person, e.g. me if I want all my relatives, and have a look at the tree. As I said, this will give all my ascendants, descendants and their spouses. I then add my remotest ancestor. But this has the drawback that descending trees can be really huge with many connectors crossing due to implexes and generation duration difference on various lines. Regarding my patch, what is your skill in manually installing software? I can send you the whole source directory…

[Mattkmmr]

@trlvn

What do the rest of you do? Are there any standard Gramps reports that are particularly good for sharing when the clan gathers?

• Relationship graph is great for showing the relationship path between two people or if you want to show all ancestors or offspring of one person. If the graph gets to complex it is useful to create several sub-graphs.
• Screenshots of the Fan Chart View are nice to show.
• I use the addon Media Report to list known persons in person group pictures.
• The Heatmap Addon is useful to show the spreading of ancestors or the offspring of an ancestor or the migration of families.

In general people are more interested into pictures and stories (especially of close relatives) than into data of all their distant relatives.

[hewettp]

With larger numbers of people, the charts can get complex, with many of the lines crossing. The graphviz tool doesn’t always get the optimum layout, so I use a little script to improve the layout (that is, achieve a chart with fewer crossings). A copy of the python script is at https://github.com/hewettp/GrampsCrossing.
(Apologies for the quality of code in the script, but it works for me and can greatly improve the clarity of the larger charts.)