As some may be aware, I’ve been working for a while now on a book on heraldry in Virginia. It started as an updating, correction, and expansion of Crozier’s 1908 Virginia Heraldica, although it has grown from there. I’ve encountered a number of glaring errors in Crozier’s work, many of them not primarily his fault. None, however is more egregious than this tale of the arms of the Steptoe family.

Largely based on Crozier’s work, for over 100 years now American armorial collections have uncritically included the arms of a Philip Steptoe, ostensibly carved on his tomb at Teddington on the James River in Charles City County: Azure a fleur-de-lis Argent. That no such tomb can be found today is not particularly noteworthy, but it is somewhat surprising that no arms of this or any other description appear in any English armorial, official or unofficial, for anyone named Steptoe. And it is little short of amazing that there is no official record of a Philip Steptoe having lived anywhere near Charles City during the supposed lifetime of the man buried under the tomb, particularly since his epitaph, as reported, styles him “the Honorable Philip Steptoe, Esquire,” and describes him as a man who “rose to almost the Highest Honors of his Country” and was “descended of an Ancient Family.” How could a man of such eminence pass through the area without ever having served as a councillor, or burgess, or justice of the county, or even a juryman, and apparently without ever buying or inheriting land or paying taxes or tithes? The answer is that Philip Stetoe and his tombstone never existed, nor did the arms supposed carved on them.

So how did the myth of the Steptoe arms come into being?

Teddington in Charles City County was a real place, the property not of the Steptoes but of a family with an equally terpsichorean name, the Lightfoots. And there are indeed armorial tombs on the old Teddington property, one of them belonging to “the Honourable Philip Lightfoot Esquire,” who also “rose to almost the highest honours of his Country [and] was descended from an Ancient Family in England.” Furthermore, the real Philip Lightfoot died on exactly the same day as the supposed Philip Steptoe, and at exactly the same age.

The earliest description of the Steptoe tomb appears in what is obviously a fictionalized account of Christmas at the genuine Teddington in 1840, written by Charles Campbell of Petersburg. Campbell does not seem to have intended to perpetrate an armorial fraud; he has simply fictionalized the names of the then-current and past owners of Teddington throughout his account. He does not describe the shield at all (for the real one, see Lightfoot, in the REAA), but accurately describes the crest on the stone as a griffin’s head. By the time Louise Pecquet du Bellet, author of Some Prominent Virginia Families, got hold of it 60 years later, however, the coat on the “Steptoe” tomb had been discovered to be “Argen. Fleur-de-lys [italics in original] for ordinary” and the crest a stag’s head issuing from a “crown of Edward I.” This bizarre blazon was evidently her misreading of the entry for Stepkins (!) in Burke’s 1884 General Armory: “Az. a fleur-de-lis or. Crest—A stag’s head couped ar. attired or."  Finally, William Armstrong Crozier “corrected” Miss Pequet du Bellet’s version into Azure a fleur-de-lis Argent, (!) leaving her account of the stag’s head issuing from a coronet unchanged—all without noting the fundamental inconsistency in the names involved, Steptoe and Stepkins.

It is worth noting that there was a very real, very well-connected Steptoe family in Lancaster, Middlesex, and Westmoreland Counties on the Northern Neck, but they never had holdings on the James River, and at least until the publication of Miss Pecquet du Bellet’s account, never seem to have used a coat of arms.

A lesson for us all.

Fascinating. A nice piece of detective work, Joe.

I must credit my wife, who cares less than nothing about heraldry, with seeing the "toe" and "foot" connection between the names.

Well tell your wife the heraldic community appreciates her dipping her toe in.

Very interesting!

Well, so much for truth being stranger than fiction!—maybe truth in this case is no stranger to fiction…

So have the Steptoes in VA been actually using the arms wth the silver f-d-l ?  If so - and if those weren’t already the historical arms of some other unconnected family- then arguably they are (or have become over a significant time) essentially the assumed arms of that family, per our AHS Guidelines.

Not suggsting that qualifies them as historical arms suitable for inclusion in your REAA, just commenting on how such an honest AFAIK error, over time, in effect creates an acceptable assumption.  Dropping, of course, the nonsense of using an English royal crown as a crest-coronet.

IIRC the Guidelines address the possibility of innocent infringement on any too-similar pre-existing historical arms, so long as the crests are different.

Michael F. McCartney;101469 wrote:

So have the Steptoes in VA been actually using the arms wth the silver f-d-l ?

Dunno.

Quote:

If so - and if those weren’t already the historical arms of some other unconnected family-

Hard to believe that someone doesn’t have a claim to "Azure a fleur-de-lis Argent."

Quote:

...then arguably they are (or have become over a significant time) essentially the assumed arms of that family, per our AHS Guidelines.

I agree in principle, although ideally they shouldn’t use them in the delusion that they’re inherited from a non-existent ancestor.

Joseph McMillan;101470 wrote:

(...)

Hard to believe that someone doesn’t have a claim to "Azure a fleur-de-lis Argent."

Vell amongst others its the Arms of the French City of Soissons, where American troops fougth in WW1.

Marcus K;101477 wrote:

Vell amongst others its the Arms of the French City of Soissons, where american troops fougth in ww1.

And an English family named Digby, and a Dutch family named Gevers.

Michael F. McCartney;101469 wrote:

Dropping, of course, the nonsense of using an English royal crown as a crest-coronet.

Should have mentioned this. This, too, was a pure fantasy, which Crozier actually did correct. The Stepkins crest issued from a ducal (i.e., crest) coronet, not a royal crown.

I’ve since found an article in the genealogy column of the Richmond Times-Dispatch newspaper from around 1905 that, so far, the earliest connection of the fleur-de-lis arms with the fictional Steptoe tomb. That still doesn’t excuse Crozier.

Amazing how things can be misinterpreted, fiction accepted as fact, and false information perpetually reused.

My article on the alleged arms of "Sir Philip Steptoe" just came out in the journal The American Genealogist.  I have it up on academia.edu for those interested.

https://www.academia.edu/14760780/_The_Honorable_Philip_Steptoe_Esquire_Supposedly_of_Virginia

Nicely done!

Most interesting, I would wager not an isolated case either.

This is an interesting paper. It makes me wonder just how many other ancestors in the United States may have mythic genealogy and arms (I would imagine quite a lot). Anyway, I look forward seeing more of your Virginia heraldry project research as it becomes available.

Mythic genealogy, certainly.  Arms are more complicated.  The mythic genealogy leads many people to usurp arms of "ancestors" from whom they don’t really descend, but there are also arms that were really used in the 17th-18th centuries that modern English-influenced heraldists dismiss as phony merely because they weren’t captured by the English heralds in their visitations, or because the design (e.g. of the arms of Dutch, German, or French commoners) doesn’t conform to their expectations of what heraldry should look like.  (See, e.g., the arms of Peter Faneuil, for whom Faneuil Hall is named, or Francis Fauquier, for whom Fauquier County, Va, is named.

Faneuil

http://www.findagrave.com/photos/2005/305/1495_113095811783.jpg

http://www.americanheraldry.org/pages/uploads/Roll/fauquier.gif