THE MID-SEASON drafting to Carlton of Sam Durdin in 2022 not surprisingly drew questions of whether he shared a family link with his fellow South Australian and newly acquired teammate Corey.

After much research, and through the assistance of the aforementioned players and their families, it can be confirmed that Sam and Corey share the same three-time great grandfather – the English migrant Charles Durdin.

And with Remembrance Day to honour those in the armed forces who died in the line of duty from a far back as The Great War, Corey’s forefathers also served – one of them acknowledged for bravery under fire on the French battlefields; the other paying with his life over the skies of England.

Their stories follow; but first it is important to join the Durdin family dots, beginning with Charles Durdin.

Charles William Durdin, the eldest son of John and Martha Durdin, was born in the West Midlands village of Knowle in Warwickshire on 15 July 1847. He was but a toddler and his brother William an infant when their parents led them up the gangway and onto the deck of the British Empire which sailed from the ports of London and Plymouth en route to Adelaide, Australia.

In Australia, John and Martha would raise five more Durdin children – in order, Charles’ younger sister Martha and brothers John, Joseph, Samuel and Thomas.

In 1874, Charles married Sarah Elizabeth Stevens (1856-1888) in Salt Lake on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula – and in the ensuing 13 years Sarah would give birth to seven children.

It seems that the Durdins settled in Kulpara, a rural town in the Hummocks Range at the northern end of the peninsula. Kulpara, whose name is derived from an Indigenous word Kula meaning "eucalyptus”, was proclaimed in 1862 and surveyed in the year the Carlton Football Club was founded.

On Thursday 1 November 1906, whilst commuting on a local train, Charles collapsed and died of a heart attack. According to The Register of the following Saturday, Charles, “an old and respected resident of Kulpara”, had for some time suffered from heart disease.

Charles’s son William Reginald Durdin (Corey’s great great grandfather) later fought for King and country in the First World War. In France, whilst serving as an ammunition carrier, William was fortunate to survive a bombing, having suffered shrapnel wounds in his head.

William was later awarded the Military Medal for gallantry and devotion to duty when under fire in battle on land. He safely made it home, but his son Reginald Wilton Durdin was not so lucky.

On November 9, 1941, in Yorkshire’s Don Valley in West Riding, England, Sgt Durdin of the RAAF was killed in a Wellington bomber crash during night exercise. Buried in South Yorkshire, the epitaph on his grave simply reads “His duty nobly done”.

Reginald Wilton Durdin was the brother of Charles Norman Durdin – Corey’s great grandfather. The lineage continued through Charles’ son Reginald Durdin (Corey’s grandfather still living in Port Lincoln) and Phillip Durdin (Corey’s father).