In writing history – family history or a historical biography— using a little math humanizes characters so we can see them as former living, breathing human beings.

An ancestry chart can provide nuts and bolts about people: birth dates, death dates, marriage dates.  But how can those dates tell a story?

While researching one interesting true character in my own tree for a history magazine article, I learned the following about a guy named John. Read (but feel free to skim) this next paragraph. I guarantee it’s boring, but a fresher approach follows:

John Martin Gose (1825-1919) married Hannah Jane McQuown (1831-1925) in 1854. They moved from Missouri to the Washington Territory in 1864 with five children, Thomas Phelps (b. 1855), Dora (b. 1856), Mack (b.1859), John (b. 1861) and Christopher (b.1863). They arrived in Walla Walla in 1865. A sixth child, Oscar (b. 1865 or 1866) was born there.

With no additional information other than those dates and locations, can we discern more about what this family was like and make their story more interesting?

1 calculator + 1 family tree = more compelling stories.

Doing a little math with the dates provided, this picture emerges:

24-year-old John and his wife Hannah, 22, began their year-long journey on the Oregon Trail with five children all under ten years old. In their covered wagon were Phelps (9), Dora (8), Mack (5), John (3) and Christopher, a nursing baby. After arrival in Walla Walla, Hannah had another child, Oscar — she’d been expecting him either during the during the arduous journey or shortly after arriving in the new settlement. Years later, when the children were teens, tragedy struck. To the devastation of John, Hannah, and the siblings, Oscar died when he was only 12 years old. 

Although I was able to confirm that yes, they traveled the Oregon Trail, dates and locations alone strongly suggested that initially. All other details in the previous paragraph came from my simply subtracting birth dates from death dates, then imagining what that must have been like for them. Who knew math could tell a story?

Does this give you an impulse to look at your own ancestral tree in a new way? Eager to find stories about your own family history? Whip out your calculator too! Let me know what stories you discover.

If you think that’s a fun way to learn about your ancestors, you may like this post, too: A 1915 Yearbook Shows Teen Life 105 Years Ago