What is the best free way to find out someones family history and background please?
Most of the free genealogy is about people born before 1930. We hide facts about living people to protect their privacy. Some questions, like “How can I get the University of Denmark’s Women’s Gymnastic team to come over to my house for an orgy?” or “How can I keep on eating bacon double cheeseburgers from my recliner, lose weight and get rock-hard abs?” don’t really have any good answers. You’d have to start with the person, find his/her parents, and work backwards, using interviews, obituaries, high school year books, census images, personnel records from corporations and so forth. If the person in question is up for a Federal Judgeship and you are an FBI agent, ask your supervisor. If the person in question is you, and this is a school project, start calling your grandparents. Apologize for not calling and writing more often. Start interviewing. If the person is a stranger, you’d need to hire a private investigator. ======================================… Added after you added detai
If it is a well known UK person there may a biography written or even someone may have done their family history already. But nothing is free in this world and you would probably directly or indirectly end up paying. If the person you know was resident in a County for a long time such as the Lord of the Manor, a duke, duchess etc try looking in the area they lived in. Many historic houses have records some in situ some at local family history libraries or large county libraries. Easiest one go to Google and put the name in, same for Wikipedia.
The Freedom of Public Information Act stops you from finding out about peoples background for the past 100 years in the UK, whether they are a well known person or not. Privacy laws are put there to stop people prying, and in fact stealing other peoples identity. Unless you are directly related to a person, and can prove it you will not be able to apply for their birth, marriage information. I am afraid you will just have to ask family for information, or alternatively contact the famous person, and ask them, they may be really intrigued, and wish to trace all their spread out family. After all just because they are well know doesn’t mean to say they are not like us wanting to know our ancestors, and relatives.
