Over the last 30 years I've gathered information on my family. I started
my interest after talking to my grandfather and hearing about, amongst other
things, the Chapman family fortune held in 
chancery. It was some time before
I had the means to do research. Of course I set about it all the wrong way
- I started with visits to graveyards. I next spent many hours in the Department
of Paleography of Durham University searching through Bishop's Transcripts
and getting my hands black with mould in the process. Eventually I found my
way to the County Record offices of Durham, Northumberland, North Yorkshire
and Newcastle on Tyne.
I began to aquire a lot of data, read books on genealogy and joined family history societies. Eventually I felt confident enough to run an evening class on tracing family trees. During this time I got together with a group of others and founded the Cleveland Family History Society. I was the first secretory, member no. 2 and the first magazine editor. I wrote a series of magazine articles on tracing your ancestors called 'Beginners Start Here'
Family commitments took my time and for the next 17 years my research came to a standstill. In the meantime I developed an interest in computers and changed my profession from chemistry teacher to Information technology teacher. An odd sequence of events took me to the USA, to Canada and a new career as a website developer. I again had spare time and now had Internet available. The Beginners Sart Here articles and my evening class notes became the Genlinks website and I restarted my research using Internet. On my return to the UK - well this website is the result.
Please feel free to use it in your own research. Of course I'd be delighted to hear from you if you can offer further information
