THE  DOVER WAR MEMORIAL  PROJECT

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FOR ALBERT KEYTON
by Judith Cox

The death of Albert Joseph Keyton on Armistice day was something my grandmother Emily Amanda Baldock (née Keyton) (left) never forgot. Every year on 11 November she would recount the sadness of the family that her brother, having survived the war itself, died, primarily from Spanish flu, just as everyone was celebrating the end of the war. They returned home from the hospital through crowds of people laughing, rejoicing and hugging each other and with all the church bells ringing out   Their younger brother Joe was lying on a stretcher in a Russian military hospital not expecting to live or see England again. Happily he did survive and returned home.

My grandmother Emily was reputed to be quite a beauty, having inherited the Irish jet black hair and blue eyes.

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Thomas Slater Milton was regarded as the family hero. He was in the Royal Navy and rose through the ranks eventually becoming a Trinity House Pilot. The pilots boarded the ships in the English channel and escorted them through the Goodwin Sands to London docks. He must have had a high reputation because in the early 1900’s there was a yacht race from Southampton to Heligoland. Sir Thomas Lipton, a millionaire friend of Edward VII, chose Thomas to pilot his yacht and they came in second.

Also prior to the 1914-18 war two German ships collided in the channel and Thomas Milton was given the task of overseeing the rescue. Although many sailors drowned several hundred were saved. The Germans decorated Thomas for his efforts in savng so many. My grandmother’s sister Rose had a certificate with a big German seal on it which gave details of the rescue. She gave the certificate to Folkestone museum after World War II.

Thomas Milton’s daughter Amanda (Emily’s mother) was regarded as having married beneath her and Amanda’s brothers and sisters had little to do with her after that. Thomas Milton’s ancestors can be traced back to Frederick Prince of Wales (1707-1751) via George II and Caroline of Brandenburgh-Anspach.

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Below - sketch of family tree by M S-K

Ferdinand Keyton =  (2) Sarah Coleman Smith
George Emanuel Keyton b 1850 in Dover = 1867 in Dover Margaret Palmer (daughter of Susannah Elizabeth Barrows Palmer, great aunt of Walter Tull (see Tull trees))	Albert Walter Keyton b 1861 in Dover  = 1890 in Dover Amanda Elizabeth Milton d 9 November 1917 in Dover (daughter of Thomas Slater Milton)	other children

children of Albert Walter Keyton and Amanda Elizabeth Milton: