Memories of Thomas Culbert and Letitia Dempster

Thomas Culbert & Letitia (Dempster) Culbert. This photo was probably taken in their kitchen at 784 Wellington Street in London, Ontario. Photo courtesy of Jane (Gras) Heigis.

In 2018, the Culbert Family History blog posted a biography (click here) of Thomas Culbert (1846-1930) the son of John Culbert and Mary Ward. In that biography, you learned about Thomas’s Central Hotel in Granton, Ontario; and later, his lucrative career as a travelling sales representative for the Carling Brewery of London, Ontario. And if you read this post (click here) you learned of Thomas’s dealings with the legendary Donnellys of Lucan-Biddulph.

Let’s turn things over now to Thomas and Letitia’s grandson, the late Milton Richard Culbert (1908-1996). Milton and his parents, Milton Thomas Culbert and Laura May Yeo lived in Toronto but periodically, they would board a train to London to visit Thomas and Letitia.

Milton Richard Culbert self-published his memoirs, The Culbert Chronicles in 1995. In The Culbert Chronicles, Milton recounted his memories about Thomas and Letitia.

784 Wellington Street in London, Ontario, Canada. This house was built for Thomas Culbert and his family in 1904. For the past 50 years, this house has been owned and beautifully maintained by Marlyn Loft. Thanks to Marlyn for graciously allowing me to photograph her home. Photo by Mary Jane Culbert, 2017.

784 Wellington Street in the winter, 2021. Photo by Marlyn Loft.

Here, as follows, are some of Milton Richard Culbert's memories of his grandparents, Thomas and Letitia Culbert. The text is by Milton Richard Culbert with photo captions by Mary Jane Culbert.

Our affectionate greeting from my beloved grandparents (Thomas and Letitia) was always the same. Grandmother Culbert would appear at the door first, bubbling over with delighted chuckles and crying, ‘Well, if it isn’t my Pet, sure enough!” Grandfather Culbert would follow with his own quiet welcome. Tall, muscular, and white-moustached, he carried about his person the delicious aura of fine cigar smoke.

Welcome to 784 Wellington Street! Photo by Mary Jane Culbert.

 

From early childhood I was used to my grandmother Culbert’s odd appearance, but to a stranger, she was an unbelievable apparition.

In her youth, I imagine she was a slight little sandy blonde. In age, it was it was impossible to tell. Her thinning, faded hair was drawn tightly away from her brow into a small bun at the back of her head, in ballet-style; but after that, there was no further likeness to a ballerina. She had lost all her teeth by the time she was twenty, and had found wearing dentures intolerable thereafter, so her mouth had sunk into a little puckered slit beneath her beaky nose, accentuating her pointed chin and giving her a witch-like profile. However, this impression was dispelled by her tranquil demeanour and her warm smile.

Letitia (Dempster) Culbert

At first meeting, her bizarre attire would make one think that she was costumed for a part in an early settler play. A white, frilled waist ended high on her neck in a lacey collar. Her long, black, pleated serge skirt began up under her sparse bosom and spread downward to her feet, which were always clad in carpet slippers. I suppose she had two or three of these identical outfits, but in all the years that I knew her, I never saw her wearing anything else.

Aside from seeing her once or twice in the back garden, picking tomatoes, she never left the confines of the house, with one notable exception: about once every four years when there was an election, she donned a hat and coat, and presumably button boots, and went to the polls to vote for the conservative candidate.

When I used to tell how much I liked my Grandmother Culbert, my mother would get quite annoyed and complain, “She has never once sent you a Christmas present or even a birthday card, but just think of all the things your Gran Yeo is always giving you!” Odd how affection is given by children: I loved Grandmother Culbert; I liked Gran Yeo. The former was uncritical and approving; the latter was generous and bossy.

View onto Wellington Street from the front porch of 784 Wellington Street. Photo by Mary Jane Culbert, 2017.

Grandfather’s home was across the road from Sir Adam Beck’s estate, on Wellington Street. It was a broad, quiet, shady avenue with boulevards between sidewalk and road, affording a double line of tall, stately trees on each side.

Living room window at 784 Wellington, looking onto Wellington Street. Photo by Mary Jane Culbert, 2017.

View from an upper level of the house onto Wellington Street. Photo by Mary Jane Culbert, 2017.

It was a spacious, three-storey house, built to accommodate the fairly large Culbert family: a daughter and four living sons.

View from the side of the house into the back yard of 784 Wellington Street. Photo by Mary Jane Culbert, 2017.

My happiest recollection of the property was the magnificent plum tree that grew in the back garden. It was an easy climb of some twelve feet or so to reach the bearing centre. There, I would sit comfortably in a crotch and gorge on the luscious dark blue fruit until I bulged. Strangely enough, I never once got ill from over-stuffing myself.

In the autumn, Grandfather would pick butternuts from another large tree in the backyard and store them in the basement. When I came to visit, we would sit together at the foot of the cellar stairs on wooden boxes, and chat while he would patiently crack away at them to see how many I could hold. They were so delicious and I ate so many that I am sure he must have tired himself out hammering. I never got sick stuffing my stomach with them either.

View from the other side of the house into the back yard of 784 Wellington Street. Photo by Mary Jane Culbert, 2017.

The two of us used to take long walks to places that he knew would interest me. Our favourite stroll was along the quiet, winding, shady banks of the Thames River. There, he would pick up small stones from the shallows and show me the fossils immured in the rock.

“This one,” he would say, “is a brachiopod.” Discovering another a few minutes later he would state, “This one is a trilobite.” I was tremendously impressed with his great store of knowledge and proud to be grandson of such a learned man. It wasn’t until years later that I came to realize that these were probably the only two paleontology terms he knew, and these he must have learned from my father (a geologist.)

As a result of her Granton hotel years, Grandma Culbert was a very competent cook. But of all the fine dishes she prepared for the family, I can recall only one, - apple pie. She spent most of every Friday baking her entire week’s supply. What was really remarkable about them was, not only were they delicious when they first came out of the oven, but they were just as juicy and tasted just as good when they came out of the pantry on the following Thursday. Whether they were made from fresh apples in season, or dried apples out of season, made no difference to quality. Considering also that there were no refrigerators back then, her results were even more astonishing. Even my hypercritical mother reluctantly conceded that her mother-in-law produced the very best.

One reason that I remember Grandma Culbert’s apple pie so clearly was the fact that it was served for dessert, dinner and supper, day in and day out for weeks at a time, with no one ever tiring of it. Mother said that once every month or so, preserved fruit was served instead, but I never recall getting that.

The dining room at 784 Wellington Street in 2017 with the original light fixture. This was probably also used as the dining room when Thomas and Letitia lived here as it's located just off the kitchen. Letitia would have served many an apple pie in this room! Photo by Mary Jane Culbert.

The dining room at 784 Wellington Street in 2017. The open door leads into the living room while the closed door leads onto the "bandshell" or "bandstand" veranda. Many of the orginal architectural details in the house remain intact such as the wooden floors, doorknobs, transom windows, etc.
Photo by Mary Jane Culbert.

One day when I was about twelve and seeking to amuse myself at Grandfather’s home, I turned to the bookshelves and discovered a copy of Nonsense Novels, by Stephen Leacock. He became my literary idol and I was hooked on humour for life.

Grandfather Culbert was a big, sturdy genial man. As I remember him, he was also quite handsome, with steely blue eyes that I felt could turn fierce and intimidate when challenged: though I never saw anything but kindness beam from them. I can say also that I never heard him raise his voice in wrath. To me, however, his most characteristic facial feature was his full, white, military-style moustache.

Thomas Culbert (1846-1930). Photo courtesy of Captain Robert Milton Culbert.

Conservative in style, it was trimmed neatly to the corners of his mouth, imparting an extra air of distinction and stability to him. Any time that I thought of my grandfather, his moustache would be the first part of him that loomed into my mind.

On one visit to London when Grandfather was in his late seventies, I received a nasty shock when he greeted me. He had shaved off his wonderful moustache! I was horrified! He didn’t seem to be my venerable grandfather any more, just an ordinary-looking old man with a very long upper lip. It was years before I got over the sad feeling and could picture his face in my imagination the way it formerly was, that had made him look so impressive and handsome: my own grandfather! I tell you this because many years later when I decided to develop a moustache myself, I vowed that I would never part with it, in case I might similarly shock a younger generation. That is why you see this silly-looking thing on my upper lip, now that I have many grandchildren of my own. But I still think I would look even worse without it.

Milton Richard Culbert, grandson of Thomas Culbert & Letitia Dempster and author of The Culbert Chronicles.

I have no recollection of my Culbert grandparents attending church services. They had fallen by the wayside and defected from either the Anglican or the Presbyterian church sometime before my arrival. They were good Christian folk, of course: I often heard Grandmother muttering her prayers in her bedroom. Although her words were mostly indistinct, I sometimes heard her say “Myron”: so I knew that she was asking God to take good care of the little son who had died in infancy. I know that Grandfather was quietly devout in his own private way also: for as he coasted into his eighties, he apparently figured that though he was likely on the Lord’s approval list for admittance into Kingdom Come, just in case of any doubt, he had better make damn good and sure. He therefore went to his daughter Elva’s brother-in-law, the Reverend Bruce Hunter, and borrowed a great armful of religious tomes, which he sweated up at great length to assist him in passing any exams for admission. I am sure that when he arrived at the Pearly Gates, Saint Peter said to him, “Tom Culbert! Of course you’re in! You really didn’t have to go to all that bother toward the end. We have a lot worse guys than you up here. Now your grandson ---.”

When my father, Milton Thomas Culbert died in 1911 at age 30, the profound shock of losing the favoured son gave Grandfather Culbert a severe heart attack. After recovering from the first seizure, he suffered other lesser ones from then on for the rest of his life. I never saw him have one, but was told that he would begin to gasp with pain and then turn purple. Whenever this happened, family members, true to their Erin heritage, would come running to his aid and pump Irish whiskey into him until he turned pink again. I think that Grandfather taught himself to turn purple at will, whenever he felt he wanted a drink. He lived to the ripe age of 84. I’m sure that he is up there now in Heaven, happily lecturing in paleontology.

Just as Thomas and Letitia enjoyed a beautiful tree-lined view from their home at 784 Wellington Street, so too was their final resting place at London's Woodland Cemetery an area of beauty. Photo by Mary Jane Culbert.