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Last change: July 26, 2001

Brynielsson Genealogy Project

Joel Brynielsson

26th July 2001

Background

More than 100 years ago, between 1867 and 1887, eight children were born on a little farm in Svarteberga village, Räpplinge parish, just south of the little town Borgholm on the island Öland, close to the southern Swedish mainland. The parents were Anders Brynielsson (1839 - 1902) and Anna Kristina Olofsdotter (1846 - 1939).

In 1974 my grandfather, Eric Brynielsson, retired from work. This same year I was born as the first child of Eric's second son, Lars Brynielsson.

When Eric retired from work, he had time to take interest in what happened to the eight children after their birth. He took interest in where and how they made their living, who they married, and the history of their children and grandchildren. As the eight children were all dead, he had to contact their children, many of them living in America. Between 1974 and 1977 Eric tried to find out as much information as he could in order to draw a family tree. He also invented a convenient numbering system to keep track of all the family members that he found. For each new generation he added one integer. This integer indicates the ordering the particular child has among his/her brothers and sisters. People joining the family from outside, usually through marriage, get a letter after the number.

As an example Eric gave himself the number 161 because he is the oldest child of the sixth child (out of the eight children) of Anders and Anna Kristina (the ``root'' of the tree). Since my father, Lars Brynielsson, was Eric's second child he received number 1612. I am the first child of Lars and therefore my number is 16121. My mother, Margareta Käck, is the first wife of my father and therefore her number is 1612A.

Genealogy online

In 1997 the family gatherings got intense. This was mostly because of Bill Johnson (#1312) who came to Sweden along with his family to meet his Swedish relatives. A ``family home page'' on the Internet was requested so I put one up in November the same year. It was a static page with some names on it.

When reading about the genealogy job that my grandfather Eric had made in the seventies the idea of a dynamic web page arose in my head. I made up the assumption that in each part of our family there exists a lot of people doing family research. Each one of these people works with the genealogy for a limited amount of time (days, weeks, or maybe years) and then put their papers in a drawer. In the best case the person sends some copies to his favorite relatives. Today I have understood that I was completely right. In the Brynielsson family, as well as in other families, there exists a lot of family researchers who have not shared their work with each other, meaning they do the same job as others have already done and that they do not get the whole picture.

The idea of having a dynamic Brynielsson home page arose in my head already from start but unfortunately I did not have time to finish it until about a year later (October 1998). The system was based on the earlier mentioned numbering system that Eric Brynielsson (#161) once invented. From that day and forth a lot of people has continuously contributed to the contents in the underlying database. Today 20 people are capable of adding and altering information directly on the Internet and many more people are sending their ideas to these people who are updating according to the requests.

Anders Emanuel Brynielsson (#1412) has contributed with information regarding relatives living before Anders (#1) and Anna Kristina (#1A). To make use of this information the numbering system has been expanded with special numbers for parents. This functionality makes it possible to have upside-down trees for each family member. Although the system can handle parents for every family member we have chosen to only take interest in the ancestors of Anders (#1) and Anna Kristina (#1A).

The ``heart'' in the Brynielsson home page is the underlying database consisting of information about every known family member. Personal data, such as name and birth date, as well as bigger fields for background information and a picture exist. The quality and amount of information that is present in the database differs between different parts of the family. Some parts are well updated with background information and pictures regarding each family member. Other parts are lacking a lot of details, mainly because we have not found anyone who is interested in maintaining this part of the family tree - yet. The database information can be extracted in different ways. Drawing trees, making lists, and looking at certain individuals is possible. All presentation of personal information is password protected.

Except for the dynamic part of the Brynielsson home page there is also a gallery with static information that does not fit in the database, such as old letters and group pictures.

Conclusions

After almost three years with the dynamic Brynielsson home page I can conclude that the concept has been successful. Today we have more than 400 persons registered on the web site. The flexibility of the numbering system allows it to expand further.

There are many ways to use Internet and this project takes advantage of all of Internet's benefits at the same time. Except for the usual benefits such as that it is free of charge, that it does not care about different time zones, etc., it has one more benefit that suits the purpose of genealogy very well. I have seen that people tend to ``come and go''. This observation includes myself who has been away traveling for several months, as well as working with other things for more than half a year at a time. Other family members tend to show a lot of attention to the project for a short time, then disappearing. All of this seems natural since people go through different intense parts in their lives. However, since the start in 1998 the Brynielsson home page has always been online, has always been ready to receive new information and different people have always continued to bring information to the database to make the Brynielsson Genealogy Project continue.

Please contribute!

Internet is a tool that makes the Brynielsson Genealogy Project easier. However, I do think that there exist many family members without Internet access that has got valuable information that should be in the database. Please feel free to contribute with information regarding specific family members, as well as information that is of general interest for the Brynielsson family. Use any media you like! Send me the information in the way that suits you best! I promise to do my best to take care of everything that you send me.

If you have ideas in how we should develop the Brynielsson web pages in the future or if you are a programmer and want to help out, then please contact me so that we can improve the Brynielsson web site together.

Contact information

The Brynielsson home page: http://brynielsson.jole.com
To examine the Brynielsson home page in depth, you will need to use user id ******** in connection with password ********. If you want to be able to alter/add information yourself you need to request a personal password from me.

 Ordinary mail:  Joel Brynielsson  E-mail:  jb@jole.com  
    Peringskiöldsv. 65        
    SE-168 56 Bromma  Phone:  +46-8-371300 (home)  
    Sweden     +46-70-5394300 (mobile)  


Figure: Screenshot from http://brynielsson.jole.com (26th July 2001).
Screenshot


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