Craven Indexes is owned by Josie Walsh
and her son Mark. Josie lives in Cononley nr
Skipton and has been researching Family History
& Local History for over 30 years. Mark lives in
Cowling nr Skipton and has been involved with
Cowling local history for many years and is also
webmaster for Cowlingweb.co.uk
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Craven Indexes is more or less a hobby
website that started when Josie started to
publish the indexes so that others could share
the information that she has transcribed over
the years. The indexes were first published in
A5 booklet format but before long more and more
people were emailing asking questions so in 2004
Mark pointed out that family
history is been done on the computers and also
online so why not make the indexes available
online? Josie agreed so Mark converted all the
indexes in to Adobe PDF Files and built the
website. |
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I was born in 1949
the eldest of seven children . The only reason I
got involved with family history was due to a
disease called Friedrich's Ataxia. Two of my
younger sisters were both diagnosed with the
disease as children, and after being told it was
genetic, and that it was possible that 1st
cousins had married, I set out to trace the
family backwards to find a connection, which to
date has never been proved.
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30 years ago family
history was not a very common interest, so I had
to start from scratch. Libraries, Archives and
graveyards soon became my second home, and I
started to get involved with at that time a new
Bradford Family History Society, which proved to
be the best grounding for family history. From
this other societies were joined when a family
were found to be from somewhere else, so the net
got a lot wider as the family were found to be
from places like Scotland, Derbyshire, West
Midlands, and even Ireland, the information was
put onto family trees, which got bigger by the
year as more research was done.
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Family history is
now a lot easier to access due to the internet
and computers, and for the past few years I have
been busy inputting most of my numerous family
history indexes for the Silsden, Kildwick &
Skipton areas onto computer. This should make it
a lot easier for future generations to access.
The knowledge gained from 30 years of research,
now enables me to help others with there family
research, from which I get a lot of satisfaction
from.
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Although ill health
has slowed me down a little bit, I’m kept busy
transcribing records for the local area, and my
knowledge is now put to good use as
Cowlingweb's
resident genealogist, plus other local societies
and libraries. |
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If it is not one
thing! It is your Mother! From a young age I
remember being dragged along with my mum's
interest in what I now call "Dead People"
spending most weekends and school holidays
looking around graveyards and record offices.
Growing up around my mum doing family history
and research I never really took much interest
in it but what I did find very interesting was
the old photos of people and places that my mum
came across on our travels. As I have grown up
the love for old photos has grown and I have
also found a great interest in taking photos
myself. I would not go as far as to say I am a
photographer, it is more a hobby / interest and
it is not unusual to find me and mum walking
round graveyards - mum taking interest in the
family history with me taking photos of
graveyards, inscriptions and churches.
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I am one of the founding members of the Cowling
local history group,
Moonrakers, and have a
great interest in not only Cowling village
history but also the history of the surrounding
area as well as the people who made the history
for us to discover. I have been known to look up
family history enquiries for people, although I
would rather leave the dead people for mum to
look into for me. I am also the owner and
webmaster of
Cowlingweb.co.uk which was launched
in 2001 and has grown with the help and support
of many local and not so local people who have
stumbled across Cowlingweb while researching
their family or local history and with their
help the site continues to grow and develop.
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Building the website for me made so much sense,
with the large amount of people using the
internet to trace family history and my mum
having all the indexes and research on hand,
added to by my web design skills why not bring
it all together and offer a truly personal
research service. |
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