Now available – don’t miss a mile of Deborah Mitford’s travels with her pet goat and two dogs…

Teenager Deborah Mitford completed a two-day wartime journey but our nanny state would ban any copycat rerun of taking pets: a nanny goat, a whippet and a Labrador on public transport. From the Inner Hebrides to the Inner Cotswolds…

Will “My Wartime Journey with a Goat and Two Dogs”, published online at Ancestry-stories.com, remind older generations of milking a pet goat in a first-class railway waiting room and sharing the milk with grateful travelling companions?

Deborah Mitford was the youngest of the six Mitford sisters, whose scandalous antics rocked the Establishment in the pre-war years. This one-of-a-kind segment of her infamous family’s history is a testimony to the resilient, resourceful, can-do teenagers of yesteryear. And as an inspiration to today’s seemingly “lost” generation of teenagers (think Netflix series “Adolescence”).

A few years after the pets’ journey, she became the Duchess of Devonshire and embarked on a 10-year restoration journey, during which she spent $32 million “keeping the roof on the family home.” Thanks to the Duchess, Chatsworth House is now one of Britain’s finest and most popular stately homes, attracting 600,000 visitors a year. It famously featured in the films Pride and Prejudice (2005) and The Duchess (2008), both of which starred Keira Knightley.

Her fairy-tale life started soon after her wartime journey. It required a pre-dawn mile-long row across to the Isle of Mull to meet the day’s only mailboat, which eventually sailed into Oban, with its steam train connections. Then, on to the Cotwolds, where her family and friends gathered to welcome its youngest offspring and await the double tragedies that were to come during World War II.

: : Your family tree might have an ancestor whose life mirrors that of Deborah Mitford. Keep looking — and let us share your story with the rest of the world.