Bracewell Document Archive

OWNER OPERATOR:

The site was developed and owned by Russell Bracewell from the Joseph Marion Bracewell family in Texas.


THE EVOLUTION OF AN IDEA:

The document archive started back in early 2000 as a way to put the Joseph Marion Bracewell descendent's family tree online. The site started simply as standard HTML using free software to converter GEDCOM files into HTML pages. Over time this grew into a way to store and share documents that had been collected from 60+ years of family reunions. These documents grew to over 300. Each document was hand typed then coded to HTML for the web. In 2001 several people donated additional documents and the site continued to grow and to an unmanageable 2,000+ pages of HTML. Before long the site became to large and additional software had to be purchased.

In 2004 the site contained over 2000 pages of information with 300 Bracewell document and 350 family photos. Family Tree files were converted to new formats that allow them to be downloaded and viewed on all computer systems.

June, 2004 The site was moved to a new home that allowed for continued growth and new features. Bracewellfamily.com visitors doubled in March of 2004 from the previous year. The site received over 300 visitors per month for a total of 8,000 Visitor from 2001 when the site was started. Over time the site continued to grow and new servers had to be purchased to keep up with this growth. As new software became available and idea sparked of using original documents as a way to research. www.bracewellfamily.com

January, 2007 the first document archive was started. The archive contained several hundred images of documents on an ftp server. The documents could be downloaded and viewed. The only issue is we needed a way to view these files online and be able to zoom in when needed.

Mid 2007 the second revision of the archive was started. This used CMS software, custom modules, and a photo album to store the documents. www.bracewellarchive.org