QMy earliest memories of family history include being told that my great-great-grandfather, Francis Mills (1843-1908) was the illegitimate son of Sir Francis Burdett. The story was often repeated at family events that he did little work and collected an allowance from the cashiers of Coutts & Co at 440 Strand, London. This meant that his son, Francis Burdett Mills (1875-1951) had enough money to start and run his own dairy in Wandsworth, which he eventually sold to United Dairies in 1924. This story is commonplace in the families of the offspring of Francis Burdett Mills.
I took little real interest in genealogy until my father died in 2010, when I was handed a box of old photographs by my mother when clearing out his things. Starting in earnest in 2013 and when work allowed, I have managed to trace back to all my 3x greatgrandparents, with the exception of the parents of Francis Mills, with
