CalverleyInfo History

 

In 2000, David Simpson in Pudsey and Steve Gaunt in Croatia 'met' online and started to share information regarding their family histories.

 

In March 2001, Steve set up a 5mb web site to hold his and David's shared data. This was quickly extended to four free 5mb websites clumsily linked together and made public.

 

On the 9th March 2002, Steve registered the name calverley.info and set up some serious web hosting with 50GB space. It is decided that the goal of the site would be to collect historical and genealogical data from the area within Calverley Parish. The site is redesigned.

The site gets a lot of attention and to deal with queries, a forum is introduced.

 

In 2003 The site extends further, taking in census material from outside of the Calverley parish. The site starts to receive material from other transcribers. Allied subsites for Farnley and Hampsthwaite added.

 

On January 21st 2006, the Forum is replaced by a more professional version after the original trial was bombarded with spam.

 

In Sept 2007 David Simpson leaves CalverleyInfo and concentrates on Guiseley Parish.

The site reaches over 2000 separate pages in 2007. The hosting is expanded to 100GB. Much of the site is redesigned to a more modern format.

 

In April 2009, David Simpson dies of cancer.

During 2009, the area of Tong is added to the site, with all the censuses and available church material. The site now has 2450 separate pages.

 

On November 12th 2009, the searchable database developed for us by Steve Nicholas became live and is an immediate success. The database holds all our census and church material along with the material from South Bradford Local History Alliance (SBLHA).

 

In February 2010 the site is listed as the top West Yorkshire Genealogical site by 'My Family Tree' magazine.

 

In May 2010 the database reaches over 500,000 entries. Bradford's Telegraph & Argus publishes a feature about CalverleyInfo and SBLHA.

 

Through September 2010, the site is completely rebuilt without frames and all the pages are standardised and updated to suit modern browsers.

 

On October 18th 2010, www.calverleyinfo.com was added as an alternative address.

 

The Vital Records Database reached 100,000 searches on 22 November 2010.

 

On the 9th of March 2012 we celebrated our tenth birthday and added the "Years of Service" banner to the header.

 

On the 22nd of March 2012, the Hampsthwaite subsection of the site was revised and redesignated "Nidderdale" due to the expansion of cover to include data from the head of the dale at Middlesmoor right down to the villages of Nidd and Scotton over the Ripon Road. Also included are the settlements in the Washburn Valley to the South-West. Meanwhile our database reaches over 783,000 entries.

 

Through October and November 2012, the site was updated page by page to HTML5 and scrolling tables with a fixed header were made to work in ALL current browsers.

 

In January 2013, marriage banns were added to the Vital Records Database.

 

On the 12th June 2013, the database content reached over 1,000,000 entries.

 

In Spring 2021, we celebrated our 20th year of service. The database contains 1,147,425 people and has been searched 1,144,142 times.

 

On the 10th October 2021, the forum was abandoned and the CalverleyInfo Facebook group was made.

 

In 2022 we started to concentrate on the rich sources from the Bramley area, as we already include records from the areas close by Calverley parish, these being Rodley, Swinnow and Stanningley. Bramley censuses and Church records are being added daily.

The Vital Records Database now contains 1,206,565 entries.

 

In 2023 we added cemetery memorials to the VRD. The database now contains 1,262,912 entries and has run 1,298,622 searches.