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ABOUT ME
My name is Tim Bratcher, and I was born in Lousiville, Kentucky, in 1966. My mother's side of the family comes, most recently, from Edmonson County, Kentucky, and my father's side from Grayson County, Kentucky.
My last grandparent passed away in 2005, and it wasn't long after that I realized how much more I had lost than I initially thought. My Grandma Bratcher was a wealth of family history data, but I never had the foresight to sit down with her and get it all down.
I am trying not to make the same mistake with my parents, and over the last five years or so, I've dragged ma and pa to more cemeteries, courthouses, and homes of distant relatives than I'd care to admit.
But it's been worth it.
I've uncovered so many interesting things about my family and our collective history, and I've become closer to my mom and dad than ever before. I believe it's theraputic for them to wax nostaligic about their lives and there's some comfort in knowing that someone has bothered to write everything down.
ABOUT THIS DATABASE
Originally, I thought of using a retail software product to record my family history research, but I didn't care for the idea that my data would be in a format that the software developer controlled. I also thought about putting a page together for each of my ancestors, but I realized rather quickly that the burden of doing so would be enormous.
The only solution was to build my own database, which I did with Microsoft Access. After I had a healthy bit of data, I began to research how to put that data on the web. Active Server Pages (or ASP) was the clear solution, so I set out to teach myself how to program in that language.
Everything on my website, I programmed myself. It still has some kinks in it, and it still loads rather slowly, but I believe the results are pretty decent, all things considered.
Perhaps the most important part about getting my data on-line is that the data is recorded in Google and other search sites, and, as a result, I get emails quite frequently from distant relatives scattered across the world.
My research methods are rather old school. I use ancestry.com for most of the information, but I also get out on the road whenever I can to interview people, scan photos, and find cemeteries. The vast majority of the images I on this site are low-resolution. I have much higher-resolution photos on my computer--trying to safeguard them and share them with everyone.
I hope you enjoy it, and please do drop me a line to say hello.
Tim
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