The Colbert Report

♫Potato potahto tomato tomahto Culbert Colbert♫

Are the Culberts and the Colberts all from the same gene pool? DNA testing says yes! At least in some cases, we can be certain that the Culberts and Colberts are one big happy family.

It’s been said that our surname Culbert may have been Colbert in Ireland.[1] We don’t know for certain but it’s possible that our family changed the spelling to Culbert at some point after they came to Canada. Some families in Canada kept the original spelling Colbert while others replaced the “o” with a “u.” Families in Ireland tend to have varied the spelling as well.

Let’s look at Susanna Ward’s headstone in the photo below (Susanna was the mother of John Culbert’s wife, Mary (Ward) Culbert.)

Headstone of Susanna Ward and her son, William Ward in St. James Cemetery near Lucan, Ontario. Erected by Mary Colbert. Photo by Cheryl Claridge.

Notice that the headstone says "Erected by Mary Colbert in memory of her mother, Susanna Ward." The engraving shows Colbert with an “o.” Was this an error or had our family not yet changed the spelling to Culbert? We don’t know.

What is clear is that our Culberts have a DNA connection to the Colberts who settled in London Township (south of Biddulph Township), and to the Colberts of Goulbourn Township much further north near Ottawa. Some of these Colberts arrived in Canada in 1818, long before our Culberts arrived in 1840.

So if the names Culbert and Colbert are connected, is Steven Colbert our long lost cousin?

Possibly, but it’s a stretch. His ancestors came from Ireland just as ours did. Steven is Roman Catholic whereas our family are Protestants. However, Steven’s great-grandparents were married in the Lutheran Church so the conversion to Catholicism was recent in the grand scheme of things. So who knows?

If we can find out how we’re related to the London Township Colberts and the Goulbourn Township Colberts, we might be able to trace our roots back further in Ireland. But to do this, we need more Culbert descendants to take the Ancestry DNA test. Now is the perfect time to order your DNA kit. It’s on sale until St. Patrick’s Day! Please help us solve this puzzle as well as many more mysteries by taking the Ancestry DNA test.

Footnotes: ​ 

[1]Pioneers to the Present: Biddulph Township Sesquicentennial History Book 1850-2000, Lucan, Ont. : Corp. of the Township of Biddulph, 1998, 408.