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Hello, my name is Bill Harrison and I was born, and lived for many years, in Giggleswick near Settle in the county of North Yorkshire, England. For several years now I have been researching, and collating data researched by others, on my Harrison ancestors and other related families.
My interest in family history began in 1980 when I was presented with a copy of a family tree by Doreena Roberts of Potterhanworth in Lincolnshire, England. It transpired that Doreena and I had the same great grandparents so from that day I started to produce my own family tree, little guessing that this new found hobby would almost take over my life!
I now have a computer database containing details of over 30 000 ancestors and relations.
In 1995, I decided to publish some extracts from this database in my first book "The Harrisons of Gisburn Forest", detailing the descendants of Stephen Harrison of Fair Hill, a small hill farm in the Gisburn Forest. This was well received and I was persuaded to produce two other publications, "The Lunds", a register of the descendants of Francis Lund (b. 1617) of Malhamdale & Frances Crook (b. 1618), and "Out of Aigden", a register of the descendants of Thomas Geldard (b. 1625) of Aigden, near Wigglesworth & Mary Wilcock (bap. 1634) of Gisburn.
Fair Hill no longer exists as, along with Stocks village and many other farms in Gisburn Forest, it was destroyed when Fylde Water Authority flooded the valley to create a new reservoir in 1932. All that remains of Fair Hill, is the stone from over the front door, carved in 1685 with the initials G.F.H., which is now preserved in a wall at Tosside Post Office.
As for myself, I was born at Giggleswick in 1932 and and received a public school education at Giggleswick School between 1943 and 1949. I then served a student apprenticeship with the electricity authority before carrying out my national service with REME, after which I became a draughtsman with Johnson & Johnson and worked there for thirty years before taking early retirement in 1986.
Married but now divorced, I have four sons, a daughter and thirteen grandchildren and hope that some of them will develop my interest in family history in order that records will continue to be kept long after I’m gone.My family history owes much to the help of many people but particularly Alice Ann Cowking, Doreena Roberts, Isabel Pullan, Jean Harrison, Sheard Sumner, Isobel Harrison, Keith Lawson and Darlah Thomas; with very special thanks due to Phil Moore, without whom I could never have computerised my records, nor produced any of my books or this website.
