Abkhazi was a princely family in Georgia

Georgia (country)

Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

, a branch of the Shervashidze

Shervashidze

Shervashidze was a noble family in Abkhazia which, according to later sources, can be traced at least as far back as the twelfth century.Although this is quite clearly a Georgian form , the family is said to have derived from the Shirvanshahs, a dynasty of Shirvan in what is now Azerbaijan...

 family from Abkhazia

Principality of Abkhazia

The Principality of Abkhazia emerged as a separate feudal entity in the 15th-16th centuries, amid the civil wars in the Kingdom of Georgia that concluded with the dissolution of the unified Georgian monarchy...

.

According to the genealogical treatise by Prince

Batonishvili

Batonishvili was a title for princes and princesses of the blood royal in the Transcaucasian kingdom of Georgia, and was suffixed to the Christian name e.g., Alexandre Batonishvili, Ioane Batonishvili...

 Ioann of Georgia

Ioane Bagrationi

Ioane Bagrationi was a Georgian prince , writer and encyclopedist....

 (1768-1830), the ancestors of the family fled the Islamicization of Abkhazia to the eastern Georgian kingdom of Kakheti

Kakheti

Kakheti is a historical province in Eastern Georgia inhabited by Kakhetians who speak a local dialect of Georgian. It is bordered by the small mountainous province of Tusheti and the Greater Caucasus mountain range to the north, Russian Federation to the Northeast, Azerbaijan to the Southeast, and...

 were they were elevated, in 1636, to the princely dignity and enfeoffed by the king Teimuraz I

Teimuraz I of Kakheti

Teimuraz I , of the Bagrationi Dynasty, was a Georgian monarch who ruled, with intermissions, as King of Kakheti from 1605 to 1648 and also of Kartli from 1625 to 1633...

 with the estate at Kardenakhi, which had hitherto been in possession of the extinct line of the Vachnadze

Vachnadze

Vachnadze was a Georgian noble family, a principal line descending from the early medieval Donauri dynasty of Kakheti. Their offshoots were the Beburishvili . The family has produced several notable religious, military and cultural figures.The Vachnadze fief was centered at the village Kardenakhi...

 family.

After the Russian

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

 annexation of the Kingdom of Georgia

Kingdom of Georgia

The Kingdom of Georgia was a medieval monarchy established in AD 978 by Bagrat III.It flourished during the 11th and 12th centuries, the so-called "golden age" of the history of Georgia. It fell to the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, but managed to re-assert sovereignty by 1327...

, the family was integrated into Russian princely nobility

Knyaz

Kniaz, knyaz or knez is a Slavic title found in most Slavic languages, denoting a royal nobility rank. It is usually translated into English as either Prince or less commonly as Duke....

 in 1826.

In the wake of the Russian Revolution of 1917, Prince Konstantine Abkhazi, the head of the house, presided over the decision of the Assembly of Georgian Nobility

Assembly of Nobility

Assembly of the Nobility was an self-governing body of the sosloviye of the Russian nobility in Imperial Russia during 1766-1917. Their official status was defined by the Charter to the Gentry in 1785. The Nobility Assemblies were at the guberniya and uyezd levels...

 to declare their property national. He then led an anti-Soviet opposition group, and was executed by the Bolsheviks in 1923.

Prince Nicholas Abkhazi (died 1987) and his Shanghai

Shanghai

Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...

-born wife Peggy Pemberton Carter (died 1994) moved to Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 and, beginning from 1946, built the well-known "Abkhazi Gardens" in the city of Victoria, British Columbia

Victoria, British Columbia

Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of about 78,000 within the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, which has a population of 360,063, the 15th most populous Canadian...

 on Vancouver Island

Vancouver Island

Vancouver Island is a large island in British Columbia, Canada. It is one of several North American locations named after George Vancouver, the British Royal Navy officer who explored the Pacific Northwest coast of North America between 1791 and 1794...

.