About Me

About Me

My name is Christopher Gray — Chris — and the Gray One-Name Study
is very much a personal project. Not just because genealogy is my hobby,
but because it is my own surname.

Background

I joined the Royal Navy as a Weapons Engineer, which gave me an early grounding in thinking about complex systems — weapons, sensors, ships and fleets — as integrated wholes rather than collections of separate parts. After leaving the Navy I moved into the Defence industry as a Systems Engineer in that same tradition, and then into Project Management, specialising in projects involving Information Technology. Throughout my career I have used computers as tools which, together with my training as an Engineer, perhaps explains the methodical, data-driven approach I bring to genealogical research.

How I came to Family History

The study began, as many good things do, by accident. While working away from home for a few months I came across a magazine about family history. It looked like an interesting hobby, and I started gathering data on the Gray families of Yorkshire — the county where my grandfather was born.

I made good progress, but quickly realised I had accumulated far more data than I needed for my own family history. Around that time I saw an advertisement for the Guild of One-Name Studies. A study seemed like exactly the right home for all that data — and so the Gray One-Name Study was born.

The Guild of One-Name Studies

I am now an active member of the Guild — not just as a registered researcher but as a Trustee, Webmaster, and leader of the team running the Members’ Website Programme (MWP), which helps Guild members build and improve their own One-Name Study websites.

• Guild of One-Name Studies
• Gray One-Name Study — Guild registered
  study profile
• Members’ Websites Programme

My approach to the study

With millions of living and deceased Gray, Grey and variant bearers worldwide, and online records increasingly — if not always freely — available, the scope of a Gray One-Name Study is potentially vast. My approach has evolved to reflect that reality.

For my own family lines I collect data as any family historian would. But when researching the lines of other Gray and Grey families — whether for the study or to help someone who has contacted me — I apply a more exacting standard, working from verified documentary sources and distinguishing clearly between what the records show and what is inference or family tradition.

The result, I hope, is a study that is both broad enough to be useful to anyone with a Gray or Grey connection, and rigorous enough to be trusted.