Karen Miltner

@KarenMiltner

Colbert is a descendent of the four Fee Bros. who started a wine business in Rochester in the 1860s

Fee Bros. has become famous in the beverage industry%2C thanks to its popular line of cocktail bitters

Colbert was just named as the successor to David Letterman%27s Late Show

The Colbert Report is in.

The findings? There is a Rochester connection with Stephen Colbert, the Comedy Central satirist who was just named as the successor to David Letterman's Late Show.

Colbert is a descendent of the original four Fee Bros. who started a wine business in Rochester back in the 1860s. Their slogan: "The House of Fee by the Genesee since eighteen hundred and sixty-three."

"We have the same great-grandfather as Stephen Colbert. His grandmother (Marie Fee) and my grandfather (John Charles Fee II) were sister and brother. His mother (Lorna Tuck Colbert) and my father (Jack Fee) are first cousins," explains Ellen Fee, 56, who now runs the Portland Avenue beverage ingredients company with her brother Joe.

Both Joe Fee and Colbert turn 50 next month and have an undeniable family resemblance, adds Ellen Fee.

Here's the official lineage from Ellen Fee's niece, Erica Fee, producer of the First Niagara Rochester Fringe Festival, who has researched the family tree.

The original four siblings who started Fee Brothers 150 years ago were John, James, Owen and Joseph.

John Charles Fee's daughter, Marie, married a man named Andrew Tuck. Marie and Andrew Tuck had a daughter, Lorna, who married Dr. James Colbert. Lorna and James Colbert never lived in Rochester, but they raised son Stephen along with their 10 other children in Charleston, S.C.

Ellen Fee knew she had family in South Carolina, but she did not immediately make the connection with the Comedy Central star because those relatives pronounced their last name differently, putting the accent on the first syllable and not silencing the 't."

Erica Fee said her once removed second cousin started using a different pronunciation in college, "riffing on the French thing, but he is as Irish as they come."

None of the Rochester Fees have met their famous second cousin, though they have tried. Before Colbert came to give a speech at the University of Rochester several years ago, Ellen Fee sent a letter to Comedy Central inviting Colbert to visit them when he was in town. Though the pseudo-conservative comedian did not have time to do so, his secretary later told Ellen Fee that when he saw the Fee Bros. letterhead on her desk, he immediately exclaimed, "Those are my cousins."

When Ellen Fee gives company tours, she points to a picture of her great-grandfather, John Charles Fee, and tells visitors he was also Stephen Colbert's great-grandfather.

"That is my claim to fame," she says, though that's not entirely true.

Fee Bros. has become a celebrity of sorts in the beverage industry, thanks to its popular line of cocktail bitters.

Erica Fee, who is also well known in the United Kingdom theater world, said the news of Colbert's career change made her swell with family pride.

"I immediately thought of how his great-great-grandfather, Owen Fee, had struggled to make a life for himself and his family in Rochester. Owen moved to Rochester from Ireland in the 1830s and owned a grocery store at the corner of Main Street and St. Paul. He was the father of all four Fee brothers. To think that his great-great-grandson would achieve such dizzying heights surely proves the American dream is real."

KMILTNER@DemocratandChronicle.com

Twitter.com/KarenMiltner