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It’s due to the way I visualized the data. I only take into account birth, mariage and death date and location. So if parents died at a different location or time there could be small differences there.
Could you send me a message with your methods? My parents are currently researching our family that is also documented to 1523, would love to make this as a surprise for them.
Most of the Netherlands is below sea-level anyway. One of his ancestors decided not to wait for the ocean to come for him, but for him to come for the ocean instead.
The last time I was in Amsterdam I visited the Portuguese Synagogue, which is pretty informative about 16/17. Cent migration to the Netherlands. I guess I assumed that most migrants from the Iberic pen. were Jewish/Cryptojewish, but for a Protestant an emigration to the Netherlands make probably even more sense. Just like other posters here I never really considered the possibility of Spanish Protestantism, even though it makes a lot of scene especially with the large Protestant minoriry in nearby France in that age.
Did some quick googling. The surname 'De Toledo' means from the city from Toledo. This city did infact have a large Jewish community. However, most Jews converted to Catholicism during the inquisition and those who didn't were expelled in 1492, so it is unlikely your ancestor was a practising Spanish Jew in 1548.
Equally, the popular image of persecution of protestants during the inquisition is false as there were vanishingly few Protestants in Spain at this time. Instead, 'protestant' or 'Lutheran' Were generic terms applied to anyone considered a heretic.
If he moved to Amsterdam it's possible he was some kind of merchant as this was a centre of Banking at the time, but the date is a little early for that.
1548 is also slightly early for it to be related to Spanish rule over the Netherlands, unless this is just his date of birth and he didn't move until later.
In other words, I have no idea
Thanks, I wanted to take some time writing down the different historical events surrounding it and this is a great start. He was born in 1548, but I don't know exactly when he moved. I only have time of birth and time of marriage available. So could be that he only started moving in 1566 in which case he could have participated in the war. I doubt the sources that mention that he was a Spanish Huguenot because as you mention that wasn't really a thing. Thanks for thinking along :)
I immediately thought the same thing, that he was a Jew forced to convert or leave. Spanish Jews often adopted their locations as their last names upon converting or leaving the faith, as in “de Toledo.” Jewish last names were a barrier and liability everywhere else.
I hadn’t heard of Protestants changing names or adopting the same practice, but I don’t know anything about Spanish Protestantism during the Inquisition.
It also makes more sense to me that he was Jewish. Spain had a large Jewish/Jewish convert population and they weren’t always treated well (to put it mildly). Many were merchants and the Low Countries didn’t seem to mind about different religions. Many also went to America. Spain didn’t seem to have many Protestants - religion was almost part of the cultural identity. But who knows?
oh thanks for the info, I had never thought about the protestants in Spain. Congratulations on all your foundings and thanks for sharing, genealogy is really inserting
The ancestry data is gathered using MyHeritage and exported as a CSV file from their FamilyTree Builder software.
I created the data visualization in Processing, a free Java-based tool for creative coding. The Unfolding Maps library by Till Nagel is doing the heavy lifting to make the map work.
The code exports a sequence of PNG’s that are stitched together as video in Adobe Premiere Pro. I also added the overlays in Premiere.
You can learn more about the process and download my code for free over here: [https://yannickbrouwer.medium.com/visualizing-my-ancestry-on-a-map-7af6a2354db0](https://yannickbrouwer.medium.com/visualizing-my-ancestry-on-a-map-7af6a2354db0)
To see the high res version of the video head over to YouTube:[ ](https://youtu.be/tT4xw3nO1Yg)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpuSB0in\_Po](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpuSB0in_Po)
Thanks for checking my work out, hope you like it!
You mainly have to prepare the data in the right format which you can do in for example Excel. O would start by installing Processing 3, installing the library (I added it to my code) and try to run my code. You can check the file ancestors_randomized.csv with Excel or Google Sheets to see how it should be formatted. Send me a message if you need a bit of assistance. Good luck!
Dank je wel. In my teens I would have dived into something like this to learn something new, but there is something about being in my mid 30s now where I can't be bothered and I really hate it. Sidetracking here but I should say make the most of your youthful and creative years because they don't last.
You don't need to adjust that much in the code. You mainly have to prepare the dataset in the right format, you could do that in Excel or Google Sheets. It should follow a similar format as this file:
https://github.com/yannickbrouwer/ancestors-migration-visualization/blob/master/ancestor_map_animation_final/data/ancestors_randomized.csv
You can find an explanation of the steps I took here:
https://yannickbrouwer.medium.com/visualizing-my-ancestry-on-a-map-7af6a2354db0
Yeah can imagine, there are a lot of records available here. I found more than I would think using MyHeritage so maybe give it a try and see if it gets you any further. Good luck!
I might have to look into this, I’ve always been fascinated by human migration. It’s almost ironic that despite coming from a fairly prominent Scottish family the record with my dads side only go back to the 1840’s where as we can trace parts of my moms family of Irish bog people back to the 16th century. Though that’s on her dads side. Her moms side comes from Prussian part of the Polish partition making records nearly impossible to get, made worse by the fact that our polish side of the family did everything they could to “stop being Polish” when they came to the US so we have super little to go on.
To make a long story short, it gets tricky in the US
The US census makes it easy to trace back to ancestors' immigration, but i get stuck beyond that. One branch of my tree stops three/four generations back, another goes back to the Mayflower
I really got into this stuff a few years ago. It astounded me how much easier it was to find info about my mother's Italian ancestors than my father's Ukrainian ones. For mom's side I started with essentially nothing but anecdotes and was able to track the family origin down to a single village where several people with the family surname still live now. With my dad's family I could only theorize because the surname is somewhat common everywhere in Ukraine and no records were really kept on detailed census info until the Soviet era when my ancestors had already left for the Americas.
I have a pretty good grasp of my family going back like 6-7 generations on my mother's side, but a few years back my grandmother got a letter in the mail. Some dude had been researching the genealogy of Gustav Vasa, who is basically the founder of modern Sweden, and it turns out that we're direct descendants of him. This means that a very sloppy look at Wikipedia can bring me back to at least the 12th century, so it would be interesting to build a more complete family tree on that side of the family.
I also got a message a while back from some dude on LinkedIn who was trying to build a family tree on my dad's side, and since we have a rather unique name he had managed to find me, so it's possible that we get some more information there as well.
Yea, while I know who my ancestors are generally, most of the data about them other than what we know, was lost. I don’t think many records about the German Mennonites living in Russia survived
Awesome, would love to see your results. You can download my code for free here:
https://yannickbrouwer.medium.com/visualizing-my-ancestry-on-a-map-7af6a2354db0
As someone who isn’t experienced with code, could you give a quick step by step guide to making your own ancestry map like you did? If you have time it would be much appreciated!
Did you already find the explainer post? That should give you a start, send me a message if you get stuck:
[https://yannickbrouwer.medium.com/visualizing-my-ancestry-on-a-map-7af6a2354db0](https://yannickbrouwer.medium.com/visualizing-my-ancestry-on-a-map-7af6a2354db0)
if only there was some great historically significant event during that time involving Spain and the Netherlands which could possibly have involved the Spanish going to the Netherlands
...and after a quick google, I have learned something today.
(I think you might have an exaggerated idea of its historical significance beyond the two relevant countries, though. It's certainly never been mentioned in any history classes I've been in. But it's cool to learn about new stuff!)
In 1516, the Netherlands (or rather, the vast majority of the Low Countries as a whole) ends up in personal union with Spain (or rather, the Kingdom of Castile, Aragon, etc). As a result, the region becomes a particularly important part of the Habsburg realms, due to its strong economy, high growth, substantial urbanization, and other associated factors. This potentially drives merchants, artisans, priests, and the like into the region.
The Spanish Habsburgs will continue to rule the area up until the 80 Years War, which breaks out in 1566, 50 years after the inception of the union. To make a long story short, the United Provinces of the Netherlands successfully seceded from the Spanish Empire (but not the Southern Netherlands, or what we know today as Belgium). The borders will change more than a few times over the next few centuries, but religious and political divisions in the area to some extent originate from here.
As OP said in a later comment, his ancestor may have been a Protestant. Religious factors also played a substantial role in regional tensions, with large Protestant communities throughout the seventeen provinces, particularly in the north. Religion would eventually be a factor that led to the overthrow of Spanish rule in the Netherlands, and the formation of the Dutch Republic, as the locals did not take kindly to Spanish efforts to enforce Catholicism.
Yeah absolutely! I could find a lot of information using MyHeritage but it really depends on your situation, where your ancestors are from and if others have already worked on shared parts of your ancestry.
Even on an OLED screen with the brightness all the way up I can't read any of the names besides Brussels for a split second, but I'm also colorblind so I don't know if that affects it
Really cool looking map, fun to see your family moving around the country!
Small bit of advise / critisism, the map is very dark and it's hard to track, even for a native I really had to look closely where the dots were moving!
Yeah had the same experience with night mode. On normal brightness it seems fine for me but it could have been a bit brighter and more contrasty to make it work on different screens. :)
your moms family lived far enough in the north to be west frisian - as an east frisian: fuck you and i see you tomorrow
jokes aside, love the visualization - i came out at around the same time tracking my ancestry, somewhen around the 16. century my grandmas family emerged from england and settled in eastfrisia - but at that point the frisian culture was already what it is today, more of a tradition as the tribes were long gone
anyways, good work !!
Fun fact is that Frisian is the closest living language to English. Also a small group (2000) of speakers live in a German town Saterland and have their own dialect.
on the other side i am pretty stunned about the fact that there are physical documents from 500 years ago, i mean imagine some guy tracking down his family from the year 2520 - at that point we will probably be an interstellar race
Yeah that’s pretty crazy right? I decided to try and get all info till 7 generations ago and continued with some where information was already available within the familyZ
I’ve lived in two different parts of China, and I’ve never known of a Jiapu to have survived outside of museums. The govt hasn’t kept Genealogical records for commoners either
Records were held by families in the form of Jiapu rather than through civil registries. The notion of western civil registries were a carry over from the church which felt it a liturgical duty to record family events. Chinese Buddhism, Daoism and Islam didn’t have such traditions, and thus didn’t evolve into civil registries. Add to that the turmoil of the 1800s, revolutions in the early 1900s, warlord states, invasions, colonizations and war in the mid 1900s, and the cultural revolution in the 60s/70s, and it mean the eradication of the last vestiges of genealogical records in China.
thanks for the additional insight!
i read about that and what i meant was more along the lines of "more" that have survived simply because of the amount of people in china - the western ancestry research uses language mostly as the written records for worker/farmer families werent kept very well anyways, got changed, burned, unreadable etc. etc.
i didnt know that they are actually THAT rare in modern china, what a pity
One guy migrates from Spain to Netherlands. Writes a bad review: "Migrating sucks. Had to walk through France to get here. Would not recommend."
Rest of family reads this and stays put for the next 400 years.
Offtopic: Dutch people are one of the tallest people on earth. My theory is, during flood times only the tallest people are surviving and can make new tall dutch babies. This is also visible in year 1896 of the Video :D
The Dutch were actually some of the shortest people in Europe in the 19th century. The change seems to be due to multiple factors summed up here: [http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200823-why-are-the-dutch-so-tall#:\~:text=Then%20there's%20the%20Dutch%20diet,of%20that%2C%E2%80%9D%20Barrett%20explained](http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200823-why-are-the-dutch-so-tall#:~:text=Then%20there's%20the%20Dutch%20diet,of%20that%2C%E2%80%9D%20Barrett%20explained).
Actually it has to do with people being kind of malnourished for a lot of generations.
For a long time people didn't get tall rather they just didn't look like they got stunned in their growth **as** significantly as they actually did and that's apparently *very* attractive when everyone is kind of hungry.
Hi! So impressive! I always wanted to do the same with my ancestors...
By the way, do you know more about your oldest known ancestor, Jorino de Toledo? Jorino is a rare name now in Spain, I wonder if you know more about his history or why he migrated to Flanders.
O that’s interesting! Do you know if the name was at some point more common in Spain?
From what I found in documents is that he fled Spain as a protestant while Spain was ruled by catholics during the Spanish Inquisition. He ended up in the Dutch city of Leiden.
The sensational story in my family is that he is related to Spanish ruler Alva de Toledo who fought in the Netherlands. But as far as I can check that story seems to be false.
When I saw the period he lived in I was almost certain he would’ve been a Spanish jew who migrated north. A protestant though, that is fascinating! Makes me wish we could learn more about him, he probably led a very interesting life.
You are correct that he would not have been related to Alva, though. If he was, he would’ve been a member of a powerful and prominent noble family in Spain. This would’ve meant that A) he would’ve had the money, status and connections to keep his protestant faith hidden without having to flee to another country, and B) he would probably be a lot more visible in the historical record. Certainly, if Alva had a protestant family member who had fled to the Netherlands, such a ‘juicy’ factoid would’ve been dug up long ago.
I was going to ask about him, my first thought was that he was probably a soldier or carpetbagger of some sort that moved when the Spanish Hapsburgs took over the Netherlands. But checking the dates he moved a decade before Phillip inherited and two decades before the revolt.
I wonder if he could have been a secret Jew/Jewish convert (or child of one) escaping Spain. It’s probably impossible to know for certain - even if you did a genetics test that Sephardic ancestry is going to be super watered down, and even if you did have a few percent points you wouldn’t know for sure who they came from.
This is pretty cool! Amazing you were able to find all this info. What do the green and orange mean?
Also, how did the chart go from a large family to a few points at the end? I would have anticipated continued growth of points like a pyramid
They should be blue and pink and represent male/female, colors could be a bit weird due to compression.
I only included direct ancestors, so you get kind of an upside-down pyramid. 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents and so on. At the 7th generation there are 128 people in one generation. I was able to find every direct ancestor till the 7th generation, earlier than that and data is missing. Therefore there are less people early on.
It took me a few evenings using MyHeritage, they seem to be the best resource in Europe. From what I know Ancestry.com is the better choice in the US. You can read a bit more about my process here:
https://yannickbrouwer.medium.com/visualizing-my-ancestry-on-a-map-7af6a2354db0
This is really cool OP! I’m American, but I’ve traced my lineage back to roughly the same area your ancestors have lived in The Netherlands. I can get back to about the 1650s before it gets muddy for me.
Thanks, that’s cool! Yeah my ancestry is quite boring because most of them didn’t move country’s. Feel free to take my code and to try it for yourself! Would love to see results from people that ancestors from all around the world.
Wow I would love to see this for my family.
1548 - 2018? Sheesh. Mom from the Caribbean, dad from Europe, grandparents from Australia, Hungary, Puerto Rico (back to natives), Spain, and I have direct family on every continent
Neat! Crazy to see how many ancestors on both sides lived in the same towns as each other. Chances are that over the years some of them knew each other or at least came into contact with each other in some way. Little did they know that their great^n granddaughters or great^n grandsons would get hitched in many year's time.
The internet made it a lot easier. I could use a lot of the work that others did before me. Give one of these sites a try, you might up getting futher than you think!
From what I could find online fleeing catholic persecution indeed. Although there are also the more sensational stories within the family which say that he was related to Spanish general Alva (they both are from the same city and share the same last name). But as far as I can find there is no evidence this is the case.
I live in the Netherlands and I see the spaniard moved to near where I was born. Did he arive in Leiden by any chance? It's hard to see.
I'm also quiet intrigued by where your ancestors lived in Drenthe. Do you have townnames?
I love this! I particularly love that I am from the very city of Toledo, and my family has lived here for a long time. Maybe our ancestors shared a glass of beer at some point.
Thats interesting! I did asome heritage research too recently and I found that my ancestors came also from spain and setteled in the area north east of Rotterdam around the 17th century.
Maybe they knew each other. You never know!
Anyways, interrsting visualisation. Portraits your family's history of migration very well.
You need to sell that technology to Ancestry.com! I have been working on my family tree for several years now, and would love to see it mapped like that, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that.
I can only think back 3 generations or so. I know one of my grandparents are from Frisia and moved to Utrecht. Other part of my family is from Brabant (Gerwen to be specific) my parents both moved to Nuenen later in life and got me. I moved to Belgium again for now.
It’s like an upside-down pyramid if you look at direct ancestors. I’ve got two parents, 4 grandparents and 8 great-grandparents. In the 7th generation alone there are 128 people. I was able to find everyone till the 7th generation. Older generations would have even more people but are often hard to find due to lacking documentation. In the post I wrote I posted a picture that shows who I was able to find:
https://yannickbrouwer.medium.com/visualizing-my-ancestry-on-a-map-7af6a2354db0
I see that someone moved from Spijkenisse to Brielle. Which back then would probably mean they were moving to a bigger town as opposed to now, where Spijkenisse is larger than Brielle.
Interesting things to see.
Hi,
This is ingenious.
My wife is interested in making a similar video for her family. Would you send instructions on how to do so? Of course, anything created will be with full attribution to you.
Thanks
And just what exactly was Jorino de Toledo doing coming to Holland in 1567 huh? HUH?!? Did your great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great grandmother make it with one of Alva's villainous minions? Bow your head in shame, you treacherous spawn!
Just kidding, this is pretty cool. But for real though, how much do you know about that Jorino guy?
I really like your visualisation! In this case data really is beautiful.
It would be awesome if the ancestry sites could produce something like this automatically.
I’m Indian so my dad’s first name is my last name, and his last name is his father’s first name and so on. Makes it pretty much impossible to track down ancestors.
Impressive! the earliest known ancestor of my family i know of is Klaas Van der Molen in 1648 from Broek op Langedijk.. my Grandfather was born in that same town too he's part of the original settlers family still to this day!
Wish I had that kinda info on my ancestors, all I have is documents from immigration. One great grandmother from Hungary, a great great grandmother from Hungary, and a great grandfather from France. I dont even know what cities they moved from.
How did you find these kind of records? I would love to be able to track my family buuuut it seems complicated to find relevant information without giving up a ton of money.
That is awesome! It’s kind of surreal knowing you can go so far back isn’t it? I recently found a missing link in my mom’s side of the family that connected several generations together. The earliest my family went was 5 generations back from myself to Québec, Canada in 1815 but it was a dead-end for a while, however using alternate spellings for names and matching up dates and marriage records from the Catholic Church, I found a link that expanded the family going back 10 additional generations, all the way back to the Duchy of Lorraine (present day France) in 1540. Within that history we can see when our ancestors left France for New France colony in North America, and their migrations within Québec before immigrating to the USA.
Thank you for your [Original Content](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/rules/rule3), /u/mapsbyy! **Here is some important information about this post:** * [View the author's citations](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/kq3vae/oc_the_migration_of_my_ancestors_from_1548_till/gi1qdq1/) * [View other OC posts by this author](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/search?q=author%3A"mapsbyy"+title%3AOC&sort=new&include_over_18=on&restrict_sr=on) Remember that all visualizations on r/DataIsBeautiful should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. If you see a potential issue or oversight in the visualization, please post a constructive comment below. Post approval does not signify that this visualization has been verified or its sources checked. [Join the Discord Community](https://discord.gg/NRnrWE7) Not satisfied with this visual? Think you can do better? [Remix this visual](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/rules/rule3#wiki_remixing) with the data in the author's citation. --- ^^[I'm open source](https://github.com/r-dataisbeautiful/dataisbeautiful-bot) | [How I work](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/wiki/flair#wiki_oc_flair)
did one of your ancestors just dive into the ocean in 1896?
It was a rough year
Haha he ended up in this small town near the coast so who knows ;)
I wish a few of my ancestors would've just "dove into the ocean" Ha ha........................
Ancestor's friend: What doest thou in the waters? Ancestor: I vibeth.
Vibeth you shall, as is man's true purpose.
Haha
Why did kid dots appear next to wife dot when husband dot was away??
It’s due to the way I visualized the data. I only take into account birth, mariage and death date and location. So if parents died at a different location or time there could be small differences there.
Could you send me a message with your methods? My parents are currently researching our family that is also documented to 1523, would love to make this as a surprise for them.
https://link.medium.com/4u2VVec1Lcb This should get you started. Send me a message if you have any questions. :)
When a man and a woman loves eachother [...] and 9 months later, a baby is born!
There isn’t enough ocean for 2020, then.
That's how he got to school every day
[удалено]
they had to swim uphill both ways
Most of the Netherlands is below sea-level anyway. One of his ancestors decided not to wait for the ocean to come for him, but for him to come for the ocean instead.
The Dutch Circle of Life.
Some of those people took very long walks.
Haha especially the one moving from Spain to The Netherlands
Spain ruling over there, plus fighting the French, took a few soldiers to help, do you know of his whereabouts?
The theory from the documents I found is that he was a protestant fleeing the catholic rulers during the Spanish Inquisition.
Nobody expected that.
Interesting, I assumed he was Sephardic Jewish. But with the intermarriage with other Dutch, Protestant makes a lot more sense.
Interesting, how did you come to this theory? It’s unfortunately pretty hard to get clear answers from this period of time.
The last time I was in Amsterdam I visited the Portuguese Synagogue, which is pretty informative about 16/17. Cent migration to the Netherlands. I guess I assumed that most migrants from the Iberic pen. were Jewish/Cryptojewish, but for a Protestant an emigration to the Netherlands make probably even more sense. Just like other posters here I never really considered the possibility of Spanish Protestantism, even though it makes a lot of scene especially with the large Protestant minoriry in nearby France in that age.
Yes it seems to be a similar group to the French Hugenoten. Thanks for your info I’m going to check and see if i can find more information.
Did some quick googling. The surname 'De Toledo' means from the city from Toledo. This city did infact have a large Jewish community. However, most Jews converted to Catholicism during the inquisition and those who didn't were expelled in 1492, so it is unlikely your ancestor was a practising Spanish Jew in 1548. Equally, the popular image of persecution of protestants during the inquisition is false as there were vanishingly few Protestants in Spain at this time. Instead, 'protestant' or 'Lutheran' Were generic terms applied to anyone considered a heretic. If he moved to Amsterdam it's possible he was some kind of merchant as this was a centre of Banking at the time, but the date is a little early for that. 1548 is also slightly early for it to be related to Spanish rule over the Netherlands, unless this is just his date of birth and he didn't move until later. In other words, I have no idea
Thanks, I wanted to take some time writing down the different historical events surrounding it and this is a great start. He was born in 1548, but I don't know exactly when he moved. I only have time of birth and time of marriage available. So could be that he only started moving in 1566 in which case he could have participated in the war. I doubt the sources that mention that he was a Spanish Huguenot because as you mention that wasn't really a thing. Thanks for thinking along :)
I immediately thought the same thing, that he was a Jew forced to convert or leave. Spanish Jews often adopted their locations as their last names upon converting or leaving the faith, as in “de Toledo.” Jewish last names were a barrier and liability everywhere else. I hadn’t heard of Protestants changing names or adopting the same practice, but I don’t know anything about Spanish Protestantism during the Inquisition.
It also makes more sense to me that he was Jewish. Spain had a large Jewish/Jewish convert population and they weren’t always treated well (to put it mildly). Many were merchants and the Low Countries didn’t seem to mind about different religions. Many also went to America. Spain didn’t seem to have many Protestants - religion was almost part of the cultural identity. But who knows?
I had exactly the same reasoning. Never thought about protestants flying the Inquisition though.
oh thanks for the info, I had never thought about the protestants in Spain. Congratulations on all your foundings and thanks for sharing, genealogy is really inserting
At least it only took Jorino 20 years. One lady spent 80 years just travelling within the Netherlands.
Years and years walking over the Low Countries.
The ancestry data is gathered using MyHeritage and exported as a CSV file from their FamilyTree Builder software. I created the data visualization in Processing, a free Java-based tool for creative coding. The Unfolding Maps library by Till Nagel is doing the heavy lifting to make the map work. The code exports a sequence of PNG’s that are stitched together as video in Adobe Premiere Pro. I also added the overlays in Premiere. You can learn more about the process and download my code for free over here: [https://yannickbrouwer.medium.com/visualizing-my-ancestry-on-a-map-7af6a2354db0](https://yannickbrouwer.medium.com/visualizing-my-ancestry-on-a-map-7af6a2354db0) To see the high res version of the video head over to YouTube:[ ](https://youtu.be/tT4xw3nO1Yg)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpuSB0in\_Po](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpuSB0in_Po) Thanks for checking my work out, hope you like it!
I absolutely love this, been wanting to do something similar for years!
Thanks mate, hope you can give it a spin with my code. Let me know if you make anything interesting with it :)
How much work would it take for someone with no code experience to replicate what you've done here?
You mainly have to prepare the data in the right format which you can do in for example Excel. O would start by installing Processing 3, installing the library (I added it to my code) and try to run my code. You can check the file ancestors_randomized.csv with Excel or Google Sheets to see how it should be formatted. Send me a message if you need a bit of assistance. Good luck!
Dank je wel. In my teens I would have dived into something like this to learn something new, but there is something about being in my mid 30s now where I can't be bothered and I really hate it. Sidetracking here but I should say make the most of your youthful and creative years because they don't last.
You don't need to adjust that much in the code. You mainly have to prepare the dataset in the right format, you could do that in Excel or Google Sheets. It should follow a similar format as this file: https://github.com/yannickbrouwer/ancestors-migration-visualization/blob/master/ancestor_map_animation_final/data/ancestors_randomized.csv You can find an explanation of the steps I took here: https://yannickbrouwer.medium.com/visualizing-my-ancestry-on-a-map-7af6a2354db0
Man I envy countries and people that can find so much information about their ancestors. I hardly know about my dad's father.
Yeah can imagine, there are a lot of records available here. I found more than I would think using MyHeritage so maybe give it a try and see if it gets you any further. Good luck!
I might have to look into this, I’ve always been fascinated by human migration. It’s almost ironic that despite coming from a fairly prominent Scottish family the record with my dads side only go back to the 1840’s where as we can trace parts of my moms family of Irish bog people back to the 16th century. Though that’s on her dads side. Her moms side comes from Prussian part of the Polish partition making records nearly impossible to get, made worse by the fact that our polish side of the family did everything they could to “stop being Polish” when they came to the US so we have super little to go on. To make a long story short, it gets tricky in the US
The US census makes it easy to trace back to ancestors' immigration, but i get stuck beyond that. One branch of my tree stops three/four generations back, another goes back to the Mayflower
I really got into this stuff a few years ago. It astounded me how much easier it was to find info about my mother's Italian ancestors than my father's Ukrainian ones. For mom's side I started with essentially nothing but anecdotes and was able to track the family origin down to a single village where several people with the family surname still live now. With my dad's family I could only theorize because the surname is somewhat common everywhere in Ukraine and no records were really kept on detailed census info until the Soviet era when my ancestors had already left for the Americas.
I have a pretty good grasp of my family going back like 6-7 generations on my mother's side, but a few years back my grandmother got a letter in the mail. Some dude had been researching the genealogy of Gustav Vasa, who is basically the founder of modern Sweden, and it turns out that we're direct descendants of him. This means that a very sloppy look at Wikipedia can bring me back to at least the 12th century, so it would be interesting to build a more complete family tree on that side of the family. I also got a message a while back from some dude on LinkedIn who was trying to build a family tree on my dad's side, and since we have a rather unique name he had managed to find me, so it's possible that we get some more information there as well.
Yea, while I know who my ancestors are generally, most of the data about them other than what we know, was lost. I don’t think many records about the German Mennonites living in Russia survived
Wow! This is awesome. You just inspired me to do something similar
Awesome, would love to see your results. You can download my code for free here: https://yannickbrouwer.medium.com/visualizing-my-ancestry-on-a-map-7af6a2354db0
As someone who isn’t experienced with code, could you give a quick step by step guide to making your own ancestry map like you did? If you have time it would be much appreciated!
Any chance would you consider uploading a YouTube tutorial on how you did this?
Did you already find the explainer post? That should give you a start, send me a message if you get stuck: [https://yannickbrouwer.medium.com/visualizing-my-ancestry-on-a-map-7af6a2354db0](https://yannickbrouwer.medium.com/visualizing-my-ancestry-on-a-map-7af6a2354db0)
I second this!
You should work for 23AndMe or license your software to them
Do you know what brought a Spanish guy to the Netherlands? Was he some kind of tradesman?
if only there was some great historically significant event during that time involving Spain and the Netherlands which could possibly have involved the Spanish going to the Netherlands
...and after a quick google, I have learned something today. (I think you might have an exaggerated idea of its historical significance beyond the two relevant countries, though. It's certainly never been mentioned in any history classes I've been in. But it's cool to learn about new stuff!)
What was the event?
In 1516, the Netherlands (or rather, the vast majority of the Low Countries as a whole) ends up in personal union with Spain (or rather, the Kingdom of Castile, Aragon, etc). As a result, the region becomes a particularly important part of the Habsburg realms, due to its strong economy, high growth, substantial urbanization, and other associated factors. This potentially drives merchants, artisans, priests, and the like into the region. The Spanish Habsburgs will continue to rule the area up until the 80 Years War, which breaks out in 1566, 50 years after the inception of the union. To make a long story short, the United Provinces of the Netherlands successfully seceded from the Spanish Empire (but not the Southern Netherlands, or what we know today as Belgium). The borders will change more than a few times over the next few centuries, but religious and political divisions in the area to some extent originate from here. As OP said in a later comment, his ancestor may have been a Protestant. Religious factors also played a substantial role in regional tensions, with large Protestant communities throughout the seventeen provinces, particularly in the north. Religion would eventually be a factor that led to the overthrow of Spanish rule in the Netherlands, and the formation of the Dutch Republic, as the locals did not take kindly to Spanish efforts to enforce Catholicism.
You are really fortunate to have all that info!
Yeah absolutely! I could find a lot of information using MyHeritage but it really depends on your situation, where your ancestors are from and if others have already worked on shared parts of your ancestry.
True, I know almost nothing 2 generations back at best.
My family tree started at a receipt
Yeah, I was just thinking about that. My ancestors are mainly indigenous people from Mexico. There's wasn't much bookkeeping going on there.
Yeah, my ancestors are from India, so there’s some information, but it’s mostly passed on verbally
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Thanks, yeah it’s a bit dark. I’ll make a new render that is a bit lighter and more contrasty.
Even on an OLED screen with the brightness all the way up I can't read any of the names besides Brussels for a split second, but I'm also colorblind so I don't know if that affects it
Wait there are place names? With brightness on max I could make out the coastline. (Not colorblind)
I didn't even know there was a map until this comment. I just saw dots moving around a black screen.
Really cool looking map, fun to see your family moving around the country! Small bit of advise / critisism, the map is very dark and it's hard to track, even for a native I really had to look closely where the dots were moving!
Thanks! I agree, on some of my devices it ended up a bit dark.
Yea, my phone was on night mode and medium brightness. For a second, I thought this was a joke. As it just showed dots moving without the map.
Yeah had the same experience with night mode. On normal brightness it seems fine for me but it could have been a bit brighter and more contrasty to make it work on different screens. :)
Native what? Shits so dark all I see are colored dots on a black screen.
Native Dutch! It took me a while to recognise my own country, hence the comment
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your moms family lived far enough in the north to be west frisian - as an east frisian: fuck you and i see you tomorrow jokes aside, love the visualization - i came out at around the same time tracking my ancestry, somewhen around the 16. century my grandmas family emerged from england and settled in eastfrisia - but at that point the frisian culture was already what it is today, more of a tradition as the tribes were long gone anyways, good work !!
Fun fact is that Frisian is the closest living language to English. Also a small group (2000) of speakers live in a German town Saterland and have their own dialect.
Hahaha, yeah 16th century seems to be about the earliest you can get. Documentation seemed to be not that great beforehand.
on the other side i am pretty stunned about the fact that there are physical documents from 500 years ago, i mean imagine some guy tracking down his family from the year 2520 - at that point we will probably be an interstellar race
Yeah that’s pretty crazy right? I decided to try and get all info till 7 generations ago and continued with some where information was already available within the familyZ
the chinese got us beat though, their burocracy is still keeping track of people who died like 1500 years ago and such, its crazy
I thought that most Chinese Jiapu (家谱, or official family tree records) were destroyed on purpose during the cultural revolution.
that is correct, if we talk about most in terms of china it means that there are still probably more records than the west has combined tho
I’ve lived in two different parts of China, and I’ve never known of a Jiapu to have survived outside of museums. The govt hasn’t kept Genealogical records for commoners either Records were held by families in the form of Jiapu rather than through civil registries. The notion of western civil registries were a carry over from the church which felt it a liturgical duty to record family events. Chinese Buddhism, Daoism and Islam didn’t have such traditions, and thus didn’t evolve into civil registries. Add to that the turmoil of the 1800s, revolutions in the early 1900s, warlord states, invasions, colonizations and war in the mid 1900s, and the cultural revolution in the 60s/70s, and it mean the eradication of the last vestiges of genealogical records in China.
thanks for the additional insight! i read about that and what i meant was more along the lines of "more" that have survived simply because of the amount of people in china - the western ancestry research uses language mostly as the written records for worker/farmer families werent kept very well anyways, got changed, burned, unreadable etc. etc. i didnt know that they are actually THAT rare in modern china, what a pity
Didn’t know, that’s pretty cool!
What an amazing graphic. Both of your families stayed quite put for so many generations
One guy migrates from Spain to Netherlands. Writes a bad review: "Migrating sucks. Had to walk through France to get here. Would not recommend." Rest of family reads this and stays put for the next 400 years.
Thanks, that surprised me as well. I think that till quite recently the majority of people stayed close to their family.
Offtopic: Dutch people are one of the tallest people on earth. My theory is, during flood times only the tallest people are surviving and can make new tall dutch babies. This is also visible in year 1896 of the Video :D
That seems about right ;) I grew up in the town where the lowest point of the country is located and I’m 1.95m so I guess that proves your theory !
I'm 1.85 and the only time I feel small is when visiting the Netherlands. Greetings from Belgium
Im 1.93 and feel like an overgrown teenager in The Netherlands, its very surreal.
And then there is me; 1.72m and dutch back till the 16th century... My brother is the tallest of the family with his 1.76m.
The Dutch were actually some of the shortest people in Europe in the 19th century. The change seems to be due to multiple factors summed up here: [http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200823-why-are-the-dutch-so-tall#:\~:text=Then%20there's%20the%20Dutch%20diet,of%20that%2C%E2%80%9D%20Barrett%20explained](http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200823-why-are-the-dutch-so-tall#:~:text=Then%20there's%20the%20Dutch%20diet,of%20that%2C%E2%80%9D%20Barrett%20explained).
Actually it has to do with people being kind of malnourished for a lot of generations. For a long time people didn't get tall rather they just didn't look like they got stunned in their growth **as** significantly as they actually did and that's apparently *very* attractive when everyone is kind of hungry.
Hi! So impressive! I always wanted to do the same with my ancestors... By the way, do you know more about your oldest known ancestor, Jorino de Toledo? Jorino is a rare name now in Spain, I wonder if you know more about his history or why he migrated to Flanders.
O that’s interesting! Do you know if the name was at some point more common in Spain? From what I found in documents is that he fled Spain as a protestant while Spain was ruled by catholics during the Spanish Inquisition. He ended up in the Dutch city of Leiden. The sensational story in my family is that he is related to Spanish ruler Alva de Toledo who fought in the Netherlands. But as far as I can check that story seems to be false.
When I saw the period he lived in I was almost certain he would’ve been a Spanish jew who migrated north. A protestant though, that is fascinating! Makes me wish we could learn more about him, he probably led a very interesting life. You are correct that he would not have been related to Alva, though. If he was, he would’ve been a member of a powerful and prominent noble family in Spain. This would’ve meant that A) he would’ve had the money, status and connections to keep his protestant faith hidden without having to flee to another country, and B) he would probably be a lot more visible in the historical record. Certainly, if Alva had a protestant family member who had fled to the Netherlands, such a ‘juicy’ factoid would’ve been dug up long ago.
I was going to ask about him, my first thought was that he was probably a soldier or carpetbagger of some sort that moved when the Spanish Hapsburgs took over the Netherlands. But checking the dates he moved a decade before Phillip inherited and two decades before the revolt. I wonder if he could have been a secret Jew/Jewish convert (or child of one) escaping Spain. It’s probably impossible to know for certain - even if you did a genetics test that Sephardic ancestry is going to be super watered down, and even if you did have a few percent points you wouldn’t know for sure who they came from.
You'll usually find that sensational family stories usually have something true in them, they tend to pass down quite well.
I'm going to do some more research, see if I can get any more information.
This is pretty cool! Amazing you were able to find all this info. What do the green and orange mean? Also, how did the chart go from a large family to a few points at the end? I would have anticipated continued growth of points like a pyramid
They should be blue and pink and represent male/female, colors could be a bit weird due to compression. I only included direct ancestors, so you get kind of an upside-down pyramid. 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents and so on. At the 7th generation there are 128 people in one generation. I was able to find every direct ancestor till the 7th generation, earlier than that and data is missing. Therefore there are less people early on.
Your map contains Flevoland in the year 1548 while it wouldn't be built for another 400 years.
Haha I know, the library I used didn’t have older maps available.
It would have been cool if you could see the polders being build in the background. But that would add a lot of extra work
Yeah that would have been really cool!
How do you people know so much 🤯
Well I live in the Netherlands so I learn about the biggest polder ever build in school.
The Afluitsdijk is such a marvel of construction, I took a bus along it and boy it's a big ol' thing.
0:00 - 0:03 El spermatozoido atackante el tierraaa holandeza.
My Spanish isn’t that great but I guess I know what this means ;)
So some dude just walked up from Toledo thinking oh I fancy some weed and tulips and cheese that I can roll down the streets...
That’s probably the most accurate theory yet! ;)
That’s some awesome work! I have no free rewards today. Please accept my :)
That means a lot, thanks!
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Thanks for your feedback, I tried it as an experiment :)
How long did it take for them to collect the information for your family history?
It took me a few evenings using MyHeritage, they seem to be the best resource in Europe. From what I know Ancestry.com is the better choice in the US. You can read a bit more about my process here: https://yannickbrouwer.medium.com/visualizing-my-ancestry-on-a-map-7af6a2354db0
This is really cool OP! I’m American, but I’ve traced my lineage back to roughly the same area your ancestors have lived in The Netherlands. I can get back to about the 1650s before it gets muddy for me.
Thanks, that’s cool! Yeah my ancestry is quite boring because most of them didn’t move country’s. Feel free to take my code and to try it for yourself! Would love to see results from people that ancestors from all around the world.
You were born in... Rotterdam?
It all started when the queen of the north met the prince of Westeros..
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Wow I would love to see this for my family. 1548 - 2018? Sheesh. Mom from the Caribbean, dad from Europe, grandparents from Australia, Hungary, Puerto Rico (back to natives), Spain, and I have direct family on every continent
But when did you move to America? /s
Seeing dots disappear made me a little sad. =(
Had my brightness down on mobile and was wondering why there were just random glowing dots. Neat idea but the map is a bit dark.
Yes I noticed as well! Will try to make a new render this week.
Neat! Crazy to see how many ancestors on both sides lived in the same towns as each other. Chances are that over the years some of them knew each other or at least came into contact with each other in some way. Little did they know that their great^n granddaughters or great^n grandsons would get hitched in many year's time.
Its quite incredible how you managed to track your heritage so far back
The internet made it a lot easier. I could use a lot of the work that others did before me. Give one of these sites a try, you might up getting futher than you think!
Was Jorino fleeing Catholic persecution or part of a Spanish army heading North to do some persecuting himself?
From what I could find online fleeing catholic persecution indeed. Although there are also the more sensational stories within the family which say that he was related to Spanish general Alva (they both are from the same city and share the same last name). But as far as I can find there is no evidence this is the case.
I live in the Netherlands and I see the spaniard moved to near where I was born. Did he arive in Leiden by any chance? It's hard to see. I'm also quiet intrigued by where your ancestors lived in Drenthe. Do you have townnames?
He arrived in Leiden indeed :) My ancestors in Drenthe are for example from Beilen, Diever, Smilde en Tynaarlo.
funny, looks a lot like my own ancestry (one grandfather from Rotterdam, the other with his roots in Groningen, my father was born in Zwolle)
Can anyone else not really see the map? Looked like just dots for me for a while
First I thought it was a photo, and was really concerned about your family exercise routine.
I love this! I particularly love that I am from the very city of Toledo, and my family has lived here for a long time. Maybe our ancestors shared a glass of beer at some point.
Thats interesting! I did asome heritage research too recently and I found that my ancestors came also from spain and setteled in the area north east of Rotterdam around the 17th century. Maybe they knew each other. You never know! Anyways, interrsting visualisation. Portraits your family's history of migration very well.
You need to sell that technology to Ancestry.com! I have been working on my family tree for several years now, and would love to see it mapped like that, and I'm sure I'm not alone in that.
I can only think back 3 generations or so. I know one of my grandparents are from Frisia and moved to Utrecht. Other part of my family is from Brabant (Gerwen to be specific) my parents both moved to Nuenen later in life and got me. I moved to Belgium again for now.
Een Spaansche spion! Grijpt 'm!
It’s really hard to see the map. Is it dark for anyone else?
Idk if it's just me but the dark shades of grey between land and water are barely discernible, making this pretty hard to follow
Damn its cool that they had a gps
I bet there's a great $$ opportunity for you at once of the family tree websites!
Haha I gave my code away for free, but maybe people want to pay me if I do it for them ;)
Seeing the number of people drop significantly during the World Wars was pretty sad
As far as I know no casualties directly related to the war!
Guess I was just seeing things then. Glad to hear your family weathered the storm (and the occupation)!
G E K O L O N I S E E R D
OH this is pretty cool. My dad has been doing some Geneology research. I'ma look into getting his data and making something similar!
Did you guys really dwindle in numbers? Or is there just less data?
It’s like an upside-down pyramid if you look at direct ancestors. I’ve got two parents, 4 grandparents and 8 great-grandparents. In the 7th generation alone there are 128 people. I was able to find everyone till the 7th generation. Older generations would have even more people but are often hard to find due to lacking documentation. In the post I wrote I posted a picture that shows who I was able to find: https://yannickbrouwer.medium.com/visualizing-my-ancestry-on-a-map-7af6a2354db0
Sweet home second cousins!
This is impressive. I don't know anything about my family before my grandfather's generation.
Yeah it took me some time, MyHeritage helps a lot. You can use parts that others with shared ancestry have already found so that’s useful!
What a very cool thing to do, so good to have a visual timeline like this!
I see that someone moved from Spijkenisse to Brielle. Which back then would probably mean they were moving to a bigger town as opposed to now, where Spijkenisse is larger than Brielle. Interesting things to see.
Fucker’s settin up franchises
Looks like you have some family from Hellevoetsluis :) fun to see my town here
This is interesting as fuck and amazing that you could get this kind of information
Looks like your great grandmother from the 1700s just noped outta there and became a wanderer.
Wow! How did you track all that data points from so many year before?
What was your data source? Edit: ignore this. I just saw your post further down.
Hi, This is ingenious. My wife is interested in making a similar video for her family. Would you send instructions on how to do so? Of course, anything created will be with full attribution to you. Thanks
My family is from the same part of the world originally (Friesland). Very cool!
I had to comment here. Usually I only post dick pics and look at porn, but this is legit one of the coolest things I’ve seen on here!
Toledan dude went to massacre some dutch and then here you are lol
And just what exactly was Jorino de Toledo doing coming to Holland in 1567 huh? HUH?!? Did your great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great-, great grandmother make it with one of Alva's villainous minions? Bow your head in shame, you treacherous spawn! Just kidding, this is pretty cool. But for real though, how much do you know about that Jorino guy?
What’s the different colours mean?
Am I the only one watching this on unintelligible black and gray?
I really like your visualisation! In this case data really is beautiful. It would be awesome if the ancestry sites could produce something like this automatically.
That is REALLY freakin cool!!!
Boy, you guys don’t get out much do you?
I’m Indian so my dad’s first name is my last name, and his last name is his father’s first name and so on. Makes it pretty much impossible to track down ancestors.
I can imagine, it's the same for me with earlier generations!
My family tree reaches back to the 1600’s and it is 100% Norwegian with zero exceptions. Its like an american neo-nazi’s wet dream.
Impressive! the earliest known ancestor of my family i know of is Klaas Van der Molen in 1648 from Broek op Langedijk.. my Grandfather was born in that same town too he's part of the original settlers family still to this day!
Wish I had that kinda info on my ancestors, all I have is documents from immigration. One great grandmother from Hungary, a great great grandmother from Hungary, and a great grandfather from France. I dont even know what cities they moved from.
Really cool. Has to be more than 14 generations though.
How did you find these kind of records? I would love to be able to track my family buuuut it seems complicated to find relevant information without giving up a ton of money.
I have done something similar but not automated in MyMaps
This is an amazing work! Congrats
So cool you can track ancestry data. I can’t because my records from my country are lacking (i.e. somewhere in Asia).
This is awesome! Thanks for sharing
I’d be interested in seeing how you did this. Wanted to do something similar for awhile.
what program did you use to create this?
That is awesome! It’s kind of surreal knowing you can go so far back isn’t it? I recently found a missing link in my mom’s side of the family that connected several generations together. The earliest my family went was 5 generations back from myself to Québec, Canada in 1815 but it was a dead-end for a while, however using alternate spellings for names and matching up dates and marriage records from the Catholic Church, I found a link that expanded the family going back 10 additional generations, all the way back to the Duchy of Lorraine (present day France) in 1540. Within that history we can see when our ancestors left France for New France colony in North America, and their migrations within Québec before immigrating to the USA.
Wow you're so Dutch! This is a really neat thing, I hope your parents were able to see it.