Landgraves of Carolina

 
snelson
 
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snelson
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27 October 2015 18:30
 

Quote:

The family didn’t need a new grant; there was no law in Carolina or Virginia requiring such a thing. It’s not like he moved to England or anything.

Totally agree that he didn’t need a new grant…I was just wondering if he may have wanted a new grant.  Hopefully the text of the document will shed some light.

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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Michael F. McCartney
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28 October 2015 00:11
 

Even if no new "grant" of arms was needed or desired, it could have been useful to have his ancestral Swiss (thus foreign) arms included in a grant of something else - in this case, the title and perhaps armorial additaments of a Landgraves.

IIRC in England centuries earlier, the Kings of Arms would grant crests to families who already possessed arms that had never been granted, thus bringing the arms into their records and (claimed) jurisdiction.  And the grantees of these new crests would also benefit by the implied recognition or confirmation of the legitimacy of their arms and gentry status..

 
snelson
 
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snelson
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03 November 2015 21:52
 

Hi again,

I’ve place an order with the North Carolina State Archives to obtain a high resolution color scan of this document.  I hope to discover if this document may be considered a grant of arms.  In the meantime, I’ve located a book titled "The De Graffenreid family scrap book: 1191-1956." This book contains a number of illustrations, including one that appears to possibly be a reproduction of this grant by Carolina Herald from the North Carolina State Archives.  Luckily, there is a digital version of the book online: https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE928182

 

The book includes illustrations of a Graffenreid patent of arms dated 1660 from Saxony (pages 167-168 ), an image of what I think may be the grant from Carolina Herald (page 180) and what looks like an impression of Christopher DeGraffenreid’s seal (page 185).

 

Here is a picture of the "grant": heraldryjunkyard.tumblr.com/image/132511460692

 

And here is a picture of the seal: http://heraldryjunkyard.tumblr.com/post/132511510327

 

The grant from Carolina Herald on page 180 is extremely difficult to read, but unless I am mistaken it does appear to grant a coat of arms, among other things.  I think I can make out the bottom portion of the document to read as follows:
Quote:

...know ye therefore that I the said Carolina Herald, by virtue of the Power and Authority granted to me by my Comission or Patent as ... above mentioned ... by that Presents give, grant and assign to the said Christopher De Graffenried Landgrave of Carolina ... ... Glory Four Coats Quarterly, First On a Ragged Staff ... ... and fired ... as the ancient Arms of his Family Second Gules a Lions head Erased Argent, third Argent a Bear’s head Erased Sable, the Fourth as the first, And over the Escutcheon of the said Arms a Landgrave’s Cap of Honor, as in the Margin ... they are more plainly depicted ... Given under my hand and Seal this Eighth day of August One Thousand Seven Hundred and Nine.

Lau. Cromp Carolina Herald…


If my reading of the above grant is correct, the arms granted by Carolina Herald featured Graffenreid’s ancestral arms in the first and fourth quarters.  Indeed, the seal shown on page 185 appears to show a similarly quartered coat.  Unfortunately there is no indication of where the original of this seal may be found today.

 

Here is a modern depiction of these quartered arms I found online:

http://www.degraffenreid.org/images/166_NewWorldArmsWeb.gif

http://www.degraffenreid.org/pages/5/index.htm

 

I still need to receive the scan from the North Carolina State Archives to properly transcribe the document, but in the meantime can anyone here make out any of the other words?

 

Thanks!

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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03 November 2015 22:37
 

Well, that is interesting!  I think my information that Cromp never made a grant came from the Oxford Guide to Heraldry (of which my copy has gone missing somewhere in the piles of books).  If not, I wonder where I got it from.

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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03 November 2015 22:55
 

On further review, as they say in the NFL, I am very, very skeptical that this is an early 18th century document.  The handwriting seems all wrong

As far as I’m concerned (and for what that’s worth), I’d like to see the provenance on this.  I’m not yelling "forgery," but I’d sure like to see the opinion of an expert on old documents before accepting it as authentic.

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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Michael F. McCartney
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03 November 2015 23:10
 

My copy of the Oxford etc. book is also AWOL but my shaky recollection is the same; but also that Crop died a pauper or at least in debt - apologies to his memory if mine is mistaken.  If true, possibly some of Crop’s papers, or at least those re: his Carolina post, never made it into the COA archives, and thus the authors of the Oxford book would not be aware of all that Crop did as Carolina Herald.  Just speculation of course.

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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03 November 2015 23:45
 

Could the document have been a later copy / transcription of an earlier document?  At least the blazon matches the seal, assuming it’s authentic.  We know (from Seb and Joe’s info above) that the de Graffenreid family had seals in the next generation, which is at least suggestive.

Of course without the original or some other reliable collaboration, an alleged copy of an alleged but missing original would not be admissible as proof!

 
snelson
 
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snelson
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04 November 2015 09:35
 

All great questions!  Hopefully the scan from the North Carolina State Archives will tell more.  The "grant" shown above looks like a later copy to me too…the circled word "seal" next to Cromp’s name, rather than showing Cromp’s actual seal, make me think this is a copy of something.

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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04 November 2015 09:48
 

Good catch re: the "seal".

I found my copy of the Oxford Guide to Heraldry.  Cromp (apologies for misspelling his name in earlier posts) died insolvent but not in debtors prison.

 

Also noted that it says there were only two Landgraves (Ketelby, who had ancestral arms in the Visitations, and Hodgson, who thought he did too but they were found to have been respited so he later got a grant from Garter & co.). We know there were a number of other L’s & C’s beyond these two, so clearly Woodcock didn’t have access to the NC records Seb and Joe have cited.

 

Also found a rec.heraldry thread in Dec 2000 on "colonial Carolina heraldry & nobility" but haven’t been able to read all of it (medical stuff interfering with my heraldry!)

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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04 November 2015 13:09
 

snelson;105128 wrote:

All great questions! Hopefully the scan from the North Carolina State Archives will tell more. The "grant" shown above looks like a later copy to me too…the circled word "seal" next to Cromp’s name, rather than showing Cromp’s actual seal, make me think this is a copy of something.


Or a forgery.

 
snelson
 
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snelson
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04 November 2015 22:31
 

Joseph McMillan;105130 wrote:

Or a forgery.


Indeed!  Whatever the document at the NC State Archives is, I agree that a complete understanding of it would need to take into account provenance, paleography, textual analysis (like looking for anachronisms), age of the paper, etc.

 

I still haven’t received a scan of the document at the NC State Archives, but today I did receive a scan from the SC State Archives of their photocopy of the document at the NC State Archives.  It appears to include a few details missing from the image in the Graffenreid book.  The most interesting detail are some words written in the lower left corner: http://heraldryjunkyard.tumblr.com/post/132576166012

 

It is difficult to read, but appears to be a statement dated 1909 stating that this is a copy of another document.  Of course, this doesn’t prove anything, since we still don’t know if it was copied from an authentic document, copied from a forgery or if it is a complete invention from 1909.

 

Two superficial details from the image in the Graffenreid book that struck me upon first look concern the decoration.  The decoration in the margin of the Graffenreid "grant" reminds me greatly of decorated margins in some 18th century English grants.  Here is a comparison between it and an English grant from 1720: http://heraldryjunkyard.tumblr.com/image/132577067007

 

http://www.bamfords-auctions.co.uk/buying/auctions/Three-Day-Fine-Art-Sale-June-19-2013/lot-1354-A-hand-scrivened-and-illuminated-vellum-grant-of-arms-dated-2nd-July-1720/

 

The second superficial detail is how the Graffenreid "grant" is decorated with some of the insignia of the Landgraves in a similar fashion to the decoration on Cromp’s appointment: http://heraldryjunkyard.tumblr.com/image/132577423922

http://library.sc.edu/file/703#page=13

 

...doesn’t prove anything, but I just offer it as an observation.

 

Ultimately, I think that the image of the seal in the Graffenreid book is more interesting that the "grant."  If the "grant" is indeed a forgery, then it has no significance other than as a curiosity.  If the "grant" can be proved to be based on an authentic document, but the recipient of the grant (Graffenreid) never made use of his newly quartered arms during his lifetime, then the grant seems pointless.  But, if surviving seal impressions (of Graffenreid’s quartered arms with the additaments of a Landgrave) can be found on genuine documents or authentic papers surviving in archives and historical societies in the Carolina’s, that would be very interesting.  Such seals wouldn’t prove that the quarters came from a Cromp grant, or any other grant necessarily.  But they would help us better understand the arms used by an important figure in American colonial history.


Quote:

If true, possibly some of Crop’s papers, or at least those re: his Carolina post, never made it into the COA archives, and thus the authors of the Oxford book would not be aware of all that Crop did as Carolina Herald. Just speculation of course.


Good point.  The Oxford Guide to Heraldry does state:
Quote:

...there is no evidence of any grant of arms made by Cromp as Carolina…page 159


It would be helpful to know if Woodcock and Robinson meant by this statement that there is no such evidence in the records of the College of Arms, or if there is no evidence in other institutions (in Britain or America) as well.

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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04 November 2015 23:38
 

Re: evidence of use of this seal by dG during his lifetime - I would add, ... or by his son or grandsons…  since we already know, IIRC, that his son’s will left seals for each of grandson.

Exactly what any of this would prove would likely depend on the document(s) bearing the seal, but would still be reasonably contemporary.

 

As to the Oxford Guide, my guess is that the statements that there were only two Landgraves and that Cromp didn’t make any grants of new arms were based on the CoA records; and, from the lack of any qualifiers like "as far as we know" or something similar, that the authors thought these statements were true.  We know that the part saying there d were only two Landgraves was wrong; but the no grants part is still up in the air.

 

Caveat - I checked the Oxford Guide yesterday evening at home but am currently in the hospital following surgery this morning, so apologies to the authors if there were any qualifiers I missed or don’t recall.  What is quite clear, however, is that the authors did rely on the CoA records, which at least as to only two Landgraves, were incomplete.

 
snelson
 
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snelson
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05 November 2015 09:31
 

Quote:

Caveat - I checked the Oxford Guide yesterday evening at home but am currently in the hospital following surgery this morning, so apologies to the authors if there were any qualifiers I missed or don’t recall.

Hope you feel better Mike!

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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05 November 2015 10:02
 

snelson;105131 wrote:

But, if surviving seal impressions (of Graffenreid’s quartered arms with the additaments of a Landgrave) can be found on genuine documents or authentic papers surviving in archives and historical societies in the Carolina’s, that would be very interesting.  Such seals wouldn’t prove that the quarters came from a Cromp grant, or any other grant necessarily.  But they would help us better understand the arms used by an important figure in American colonial history.


Absolutely.

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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05 November 2015 11:20
 

Thanks Seb.  Went well, hope to go home today,