Is your ancestor the cousin of this man? (and historic Welsh connection)

Daniel William Windmill (b 1877, photo taken about 1900)

Daniel met a man of a similar age who looked virtually identical to himself when walking down the street just after the turn of the century. He found out that this man had been researching his family tree and knew from the brief chat that they were cousins but had never met before.

The man told a wonderful story about tracing the family back to the Welsh borders around the 1300s or 1400s (this bit got muddled over the years). He said the family had been on the Welsh side and had horses but had to pay a large tax to take them through to England so instead of selling them in bulk for poor value he set up a windmill to pay for his upkeep. He sold the horses one by one and changed/established his name as Windmill in the parish registers (which this man had apparently seen) and eventually moved to England.

Now this story sounds rather fantastic but we don't have any more information about this. There may be a small grain of truth in this, it may be as accurate as you can get from this time, or there may be absolutely no truth in it whatsoever and the gentleman was a great storyteller.

Daniel never asked his name or address much to the total dismay of his family when he told them after he got home!!

All we know is that he looked virtually identical to Dan and they weren't much older than in the photo above (ie is likely to have been born 1870-1880) and lived within 10 miles from Wandsworth Prison (where the family lived as Dan's father William Henry was a prison officer).

I would love to contact any of this man's descendants or other family.