CSV file format

If you do not have a GEDCOM, you can construct a CSV file (editable in Excel) manually from historical records. The format is straightforward: one row per life event, with each person and event type listed explicitly.

Columns

Column	Description
Name	Full name of the individual the event belongs to
Event	One of: Birth, Death, Marriage, Divorce
Date	Date in YYYY-MM-DD format. Partial dates (YYYY or YYYY-MM) are accepted
Second Party	For Marriage and Divorce events: the name of the spouse
Note	Optional free-text note (e.g. "sealing" or a date range)
Source	Optional URL or citation for the record

Example

Copy and save the following as a .csv file to try it out:

Name,Event,Date,Second Party,Note,Source
Samuel West,Birth,1820-03-15,,,
Samuel West,Death,1895-07-04,,,
Samuel West,Marriage,1843-04-10,Mary Ann Collins,,
Mary Ann Collins,Birth,1824-08-22,,,
Mary Ann Collins,Death,1891-03-14,,,
Samuel West,Marriage,1854-06-01,Eliza Jane Holt,,
Eliza Jane Holt,Birth,1836-01-11,,,
Eliza Jane Holt,Death,1900-05-07,,,
Samuel West,Marriage,1862-11-20,Ruth Caldwell,,
Ruth Caldwell,Birth,1840-09-30,,,
Ruth Caldwell,Death,1910-12-01,,,

The tool will detect that Samuel West had three concurrent marriages and render a plural family chart for him.

Tips

• Every person who appears as a Second Party in a Marriage event should also have their own Birth and Death rows so their timeline can be drawn accurately.
• If a marriage ended in divorce, add a Divorce row with the same two parties. Without an end date the marriage is assumed to have lasted until the wife's death or the patriarch's death, whichever came first.
• Dates do not need to be precise. A year-only date (1843) is sufficient for the concurrent-marriage detection to work.
• The Source column is ignored by the tool but is useful for your own record-keeping.