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  • Who Do You Think You Are?

    ‘I’VE DISCOVERED A KNIGHT IN MY FAMILY TREE’

    Dec 14, 2021 6 minutes

    Curtis George Ashdown stepped forward to be knighted by George V at Buckingham Palace on 12 October 1920. He was born the son of a plumber in Deptford, Kent, with no connections or capital, so how did he manage such a meteoric rise?

    I was keen to discover why Curtis was bestowed with such an honour

    Curtis is the first cousin twice removed of Graham Ashdown, a retired pharmacist who lives in Chatham, Kent.

    “I had no idea that we had a knight in the family until five years ago,” Graham reveals. “A distant Canadian relative, Robert, sent some information from the Arrow Lakes Historical Society in British Columbia, Canada (alhs-archives.com).

    “My Great Aunt Peggy emigrated to Nakusp, a village near Arrow Lakes, after the First World War and married a soldier. In 1983, a member of the society interviewed Peggy about her life and made a recording. Robert sent me an online link, and it

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