Topics

• About the Nubbert One-Name Study
• Variants
• Origin of the surname
• Data
• DNA project
• Contact Details

About the Nubbert One-Name Study

Nubbert is a very unusual surname - there certainly aren't many of us around. It is also a very small one-name study. My project to find them all started in about 1995 when I went up to St Catherine's House as it then was to search through all the birth, marriage and death index record books. Over the course of the next few years, I picked out all the Nubbert entries I could find. And then using the census records that are available, I turned these into Nubbert families.

Variants

The surname Nubbert is in fact a variant of the more common names Nevard, Nebbard and Neobard.

Origin of the surname

Using the civil registration records, I found that the head of the family is a Joseph Nubbard who was born in about 1767. Fortunately for me, he died in December 1837, which was just after compulsory registration started. Joseph's son was Charles Nubbard (later Nubbert) who was born in Chelmsford in about 1820. All of us with the surname Nubbert descend from this Charles who moved to East London and married Louisa Emery in 1840 producing at least 10 children. A bricklayer or a builder by trade, Charles moved around the city and his children were born in Poplar, Limehouse, Stepney and Whitechapel - all areas being developed during his working lifetime in Victorian London and in need of a good bricklayer.

Data

I have all the civil registration entries and all the census records that are available for the UK.

DNA project

Having searched for many years for more Nubbert family members in the early 1800s and never seeming to find any, I decided to think laterally - Joseph Nubbard must have come from somewhere - but where? I contacted someone who was researching the name Neobard and who was doing a one-name study of the name. 'Do you have a missing Joseph - born about 1767?' I asked. As it turned out - she did. That Joseph would have come from Eye in Suffolk but would have been born in 1757. Not being too far away, we tried to match them up via parish records - but so far have drawn a blank.

So then we decided to get modern - and we got a male Nubbert and a male Neobard to do a DNA test using a 46-marker Y-Chromosome test from Ancestry. Y-chromosomes are passed from father to son (but not from father to daughter). To get a positive result it would mean that there would have had to have been no breaks in the line from father to son to son etc on either side.

Calculating that if related, our most recent common ancestor would be 10 generations back, we went ahead with the test. Surprising both of us completely, we got a match and the test results also estimated that our most recent common ancestor was indeed 10 generations back.

So now, we Nubberts finally have some connections - we are related to the surnames Neobard, Nebbard and Nevard. Now it's just a case of finding some paper records to corroborate our DNA results!

Contact details

For further information, contact:

Ms Carol E Nubbert
E-mail:

This page last updated 13 January 2012.

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Profiles of other one-name studies registered with the Guild may be found here.