A large portion of the 15.7% of my family DNA from Central England can be traced back to Martha Jane Mills.
She was the daughter of Leslie Mills & Jane Munro and born on May 8 1853, probably in Kenilworth.
She would have been 16 years old when she married an Irish housepainter named Robert Garretty on May 24 1869. Neither of her parents served as witness. Instead that honour went to her 14-year-old sister and uncle John Munro.
Judging by the 1871 census, their first child was most likely born on Oct 11 1869 or 1870. They gave him the surname Cross, after the mysterious "Mr Cross" that became Robert's stepfather back in Ireland.
LAST YEARS
Robert died of bronchial pneumonia in 1920. Martha for another dozen years, but appears to have been alienated from most of her children. Thomas Barnes, who married one of her grandchildren, couldn’t remember either Robert or Martha’s first names for a government form. My mother, who almost 12 before Martha died, has no memory of her great grandmother. Martha ignored all of her children, except her youngest daughter Jean, in her will. Martha Jane Cross died from an intestinal obstruction on April 25 1932 in Vancouver, B.C.