I've bought a few books along the way and borrowed quite a few more from the inter library service, including Jeremy Hunt's book Darwen and Its People. (I discovered later that it had been copied to CD, probably illegally, but heyho). It was a very difficult book to follow as it was as dictated, so huge long paragraphs full of "and his brother" (whose brother?? ) etc but after about 90 shots at drawing up a tree and checking his facts, I managed to produce a tree of about 5000 people - sadly I haven't yet proved I am on it, haha. Then a kind registrar told me quite casually that there was an unpublished manuscrjpt in the local library which had dissected Hunt's book. A kind stranger photocopied it for me and would not accept any payment - I have tried to pay the favour forward. It was very reassuring to discover that the deceased author and I had constructed the same tree. I felt quite sad that I couldn't tell him of a few blanks I'd managed to fill in.
I think the "how to do it" side of genealogy dawned slowly for me and so I retraced my steps many times. Fortunately I was born nosey, so I was always asking in research venues "what's that you're looking at?" which led me to the delights of bastardy orders, settlement orders, wills, marriage contracts and land transactions etc, which I would never have known about otherwise.
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