Organizing, Visualizing, [[Linking]] Family Ancestry In Obsidian

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0:00:00 Welcome!
0:00:07 Intro
0:00:18 What we're talking about today
0:02:24 Best ways to support the channel
0:02:44 Diving in
0:05:53 Single Line Data Points To Leverage The Back Links
0:06:39 Other Linked Data Points And Their Signifigance
0:06:56 File for Last Names
0:07:36 File For Locations
0:08:25 Files for Dates
0:08:38 I'm actually using a rigid folder hierarchy
0:11:41 My Templates for Ancestry Work
0:13:58 Querying data from your family records
0:15:38 Searchability and nested tags
0:19:12 Using the graph views with this project
0:20:55 Let me know how you're doing any sort of ancestry work in Obsidian
0:21:17 Closing
0:22:28 Thank you to the supporters of this channel
0:24:10 Outro

[BryanJenks]

0:00:00 Welcome!
0:00:07 Intro
0:00:18 What we're talking about today
0:02:24 Best ways to support the channel
0:02:44 Diving in
0:03:08 Lineage Tree with Mermaid.js
0:05:53 Single Line Data Points To Leverage The Back Links
0:06:39 Other Linked Data Points And Their Signifigance
0:06:56 File for Last Names
0:07:36 File For Locations
0:08:25 Files for Dates
0:08:38 I'm actually using a rigid folder hierarchy
0:11:41 My Templates for Ancestry Work
0:13:58 Querying data from your family records
0:15:38 Searchability and nested tags
0:19:12 Using the graph views with this project
0:20:55 Let me know how you're doing any sort of ancestry work in Obsidian
0:21:17 Closing
0:22:28 Thank you to the supporters of this channel
0:24:10 Outro

[anastasiapyrkh]

Hey Bryan!
Thanks for the video, I'm so glad I found someone who has already did it and walked us through the process. I have a family tree on MyHeritage and Family Search, yet I have all these little bits of information I gathered from the archive research that seem to belong somewhere but can't find their place in the tree yet (like the relations between families in the village or godparents, etc.).
I was dreaming of making a scratchboard with threads like in detective films 😆but then found Obsidian which doesn't need any space in my house, which is nice 🤣
Also I have access to digitalised documents on a couple of villages my ancestors lived in, might also be very interesting to connect all that (I'm from Ukraine, so there are lots of documents that have been destroyed by soviets or moved to archives somewhere in russia with no access granted for Ukrainians). Looks like there is a little pet project emerging!

[seaandtherhythm]

I love this ... I recently had my genomic traits analyzed .. I will definitely be taking on this project idea. Thank you Jenks💙🐙

[atsresearchcorner]

Hi Bryan, thanks for all your videos they're helping tremendously! I implemented a similar system as yours, but made a few tweaks and thought maybe it might be of interest to you or others :
- I ended up creating another folder named Relationships for marriages (and "casual" couples, because some children are born outside of marriage)
- each relationship note links to the spouses/lovers and the children born out of the relationship, in an inline fashion as you suggested
- this allows a much more navigable graph because it reduces the amounts of links, and creates a better form of "graph tree". But the best about this imo is that hovering over a relationship note on the graph now highlights the family core (parents/children) which helps a lot visually!
- the downside was that notes on individual persons were lacking a clear list of the parents and siblings, but this is alleviated by using references preceded by ! (like ![[reference]]), and now the short content of the relationship note is visible from the person's note. I use this for both parents/siblings and the romantic relationships the person is in
- my last tweak is regarding the tags, I don't use nested tags like you but I do represent the generation one-up/two-up/etc with tags and attribute colors to each generation in the graph viewer, making the navigation and family core focus much more readable.

Thanks again for the amazing content, you saved me a ton of time ! Cheers

[mca]

First time I see a video with more than one hundred likes and zero dislikes. You deserve it, well done!

[JoshuaRieth]

I've added an Address, Card Catalog (where I can link media and records, especially when there are multiple people listed), and F.A.N Club folder. renamed the names folder to Surnames. I found this would be an awesome research document, so I'll start using it in that way, especially with the template 💥. Using the F.A.N clubs folder, I might do mini-trees, still deciding what I want to add in their markdown files. I'm currently working on adding what I currently have on my family tree - linking media, adding record. Also, learning as much about what obsidian can do so I can really get a workflow.

[mindcontinuity]

Bryan, I must ask -- what is your obsidian template? I like the hr's etc.

[chetachi_]

Glad to see you coming back on Danny’s stream 🤗

[daniellemillerart]

just downloaded obsidian (I knew what it was before but it doesn't really work well with how I think from what I understood it to be) hoping to use it for family tree documentation without having to rely on something like ancestry or similar that's online only and where documents and stuff I get from my own archival research gets locked behind a paywall the second I get home from the library (for those that don't know ancestry world is free at a lot of libraries and you can download the documents to a flashdrive)...but also clearly wasn't designed before I was born. This is wonderful and hope to see it developed more.

[LessonsinHistory]

Are your backlinks embedded into a page rather than a separate pane? If so how?

[enricopinto]

Thankyou for you Video !!
I would like to know your opinion on how to sort the family tree in obsidian not so much through generations ( but through year of birth.
It happened to me that “uncles” were the same age as “nephews”

Thank you very much !

[marci.abraham]

Bryan Jenks: Bending plain text to his will. 🤩

[baselqarbun]

Hey Bryan,
Thank u very much for this video. I was looking for this from along time.
I have some quastions pls:
1. Any solution to the problem of similarity of names in the family tree in Obsidian?
2. Would u pls share with us the template of your Family Ancestry system in Obsidian?

[helmahepabolu]

Apple Notes on iPhone can scan and I think it can also do OCR. I think Prizmo as well.

[FilipeDonadio]

Hey Bryan, cool idea to use Obsidian! Thank you for this video. I'll consider doing something similar for my family as well 😊

[vrixphillips]

I've gotta wonder, how much of this still works now that a lot of Obsidian has "updated" out of this? [for instance, I don't think you can use the panes anymore? or at least mine are broken... do you know how to fix it?] reason I ask is because I'm trying to look at how interconnected the houses of England and France were during the 100 Years War towards the end, during the War of the Roses (because that's the part that has two or three major chapters dedicated to it in my dissertation) so Mermaid on Obsidian will definitely be helpful I think.

[grawsom]

Have now seen a lot of your videos, regarding Obsidian, and when seing this I was hoping to get a start with some kind of template for Ancestry to get starting.
I'we signed up for you newsletter, but nothing there.

[asozialesnetzwerk-antarktis]

Hey, I really like this method. I've already subscribed to your newsletter, but the template over there is just a general one and I wonder if you could provide this specific template?!

[spandankeshav]

Hi Bryan, I could not find your ancestry template in your current vault....am I missing something or is not there? Thanks!

[MorganChamboredon]

Hi there, very interesting tool for genealogy research. I wonder about moving from gramps to this...
I'll have to learn how to use it first. Do you think it could handle 5k people ?
Regards