World History Timeline
Lifespans of the Stadum family across two centuries — styled after the classic biographical timeline charts of Priestley and Sparks. Each bar spans from birth to death or the present day.
Family Lifespans, 1810 – 2026
Grouped by generation. Hover any bar for birth year, death year, and age. Solid bars = living; faded bars with a cap marker = deceased.
About This Chart Style
The "World History Timeline" format traces back to Joseph Priestley's A Chart of Biography (1765) — one of the first information visualizations ever published.
Priestley plotted 2,000 notable lives as horizontal bars against a shared time axis, letting readers compare overlapping lifespans at a glance. The format was later popularized by Emma Willard and others in the nineteenth century for textbook history charts.
Applied to family history, the same technique reveals generational compression and expansion, shows which ancestors overlapped in time, and makes vivid how quickly the family grew in the late twentieth century.
Notable observations
- Petter Hanson Stadum lived entirely before Palmer was born
- Palmer and Signe's bars nearly span a century each
- Three full generations are alive simultaneously today
- Dean Lloyd (Gen 6) was born in 2025 — the newest bar
Sources & Notes
Birth and death years drawn from family records compiled in the Stadum Family Archive.
- Petter Hanson Stadum dates approximate based on Norwegian emigration records
- Palmer and Signe Stadum dates from Cando, ND birth records and family documents
- Living individuals: age calculated to 2026
- Dean Lloyd born 2025 — bar extends minimally on chart