You may have noticed the many references to timelines, and not as many to family trees. In thinking about how to relay the history of our families over the years, we thought it was important to show much more than just demographics and documents. The history (and herstory) is really that – a collection of stories over time, mixed with the world and local events of those times (see example on the right) – pogroms, world wars, depressions, pandemics (oy vey!). Bundling these into a series of timelines provides that format. We searched for a suitable application where we can store these stories with their associated documents, images, and audio and video recordings. We ended up choosing a product from Tiki-Toki.

That's what you'll see in the View Histories page of this site, populated by material collected by different family members and additional research on the web. You'll also see a traditional family tree chart (see example top the right)– assembled from previous family genealogy projects and updates from family members.While the timelines are the core of this site, we’ve embedded the family tree along with it so that both are easily accessible to family members for viewing and for adding new content.

One other note about our approach – there is a lot of material here, and it's challenging to provide an easy-to-digest way to present it all. We've created the opportunity to display a timeline for each branch of the family. The extent of the content within each branch (i.e., stories, photos, recordings) will depend upon how the members of each family collaborate with each other to contribute new material. A key feature of the Tiki-Toki software is its capability to support new contributions to the timeline histories, and that is a primary reason we selected it. The content can be updated (with the appropriate steps) by family members who can document their own family history in the ways they most prefer. See the Contributions page if you are interested in building / updating your family history directly.