Colonial use of heraldic seals

 
Ben Foster
 
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Ben Foster
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28 March 2008 11:08
 

Lately I have been reviewing recorded deeds and wills from colonial Virginia (Norfolk, Essex, Gloucester), and have noticed numerous references to "his seal," etc.  Unfortunately, the seal is never described.  Does anyone have any insight into the use of seals during this period?  Can any assumptions be made with respect to the individual’s armorial status, or is it just as likely this may have been some other personal mark?

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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28 March 2008 11:42
 

Ben Foster;56290 wrote:

Lately I have been reviewing recorded deeds, wills, etc. from colonial Virginia (Norfolk, Essex, Gloucester), and have noticed numerous references to "his seal," etc. Unfortunately, the seal is never described. Does anyone have any insight into the use of seals during this period? Can any assumptions be made with respect to the individual’s armorial status, or is it just as likely this may have been some other personal mark?


I don’t think it’s possible to conclude much either way, for two reasons. First, there were non-armorial seals in use: monograms, rebuses, depictions of images not on shields. As you say, there’s usually no way of knowing what a seal looked like from the recorded copy of the document, although I’ve seen mention of a few recorded deeds in which the arms on the seal were sketched by the scribe.

 

The bigger problem is that the English-based conveyancing rules used during the colonial period positively required that land deeds, wills, etc., be sealed with a wax seal. But the English common law had never contemplated a society in which land ownership was the norm rather than the exception and in which property was treated as a commodity to be routinely bought and sold rather than as a patrimony to be accumulated and preserved.  (Not to mention in a place where seal engravers weren’t readily available to cut seals for new landowners.)  So in Virginia (and the other colonies) a lot more people were involved in land transactions than had seals to seal the documents with, armorial or not. As a result, a seller would use whatever seal happened to be handy, whether it was his or not. There are even examples cited in various post-Independence court cases in which both parties to a transaction would use the same seal!

 

Of course, this not only made the mention of the presence of a seal irrelevant in determining whether the sealer was armigerous, it also made the wax seal absolutely worthless for authenticating the document. Fortunately, the seal was no longer necessary for that purpose, because (a) a larger proportion of landowners were able to sign their names than had been the case when the requirement for seals had evolved, and (b) transactions were witnessed, and the witnesses could always be called to verify that the seller or testator had executed the instrument. So the seal became less a means of identifying the person making the deed than an expression of an intention to be solemnly bound by it.

 

As a result of this mess, most states in the first 50 years or so after independence abandoned the requirement for wax seals, either by statute or court decision, allowing makers of deeds and wills to simply use a pen-and-ink "scrawl" (e.g., the word "seal" with a circle around it) alongside their signatures.

 

Short of tracking down surviving original sealed documents in various archives, the best way I know of determining whether a particular sealer was armigerous or not is to look in Bolton’s American Armory. Almost all the historic arms mentioned in Bolton have a statement on the evidence for their use—seal, engraved silver, tombstone, bookplate, etc.—and he seems to have included most if not all of the evidence compiled by earlier scholarly heraldists, such as Whitmore, Appleton, Zieber, and Crozier.

 

I’m sure there are still lots of other original impressions of seals yet to be discovered in various courthouse storage rooms around the country. A good research project for any AHS member out there with too much time on his hands (says the director of research, hint, hint).

 
davidappleton
 
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davidappleton
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28 March 2008 13:58
 

Ben Foster;56290 wrote:

Lately I have been reviewing recorded deeds and wills from colonial Virginia (Norfolk, Essex, Gloucester), and have noticed numerous references to "his seal," etc.  Unfortunately, the seal is never described.  Does anyone have any insight into the use of seals during this period?  Can any assumptions be made with respect to the individual’s armorial status, or is it just as likely this may have been some other personal mark?


I cannot speak for Virginia, but in colonial Massachusetts there were both seals with arms and seals without which were used.  In some cases, an individual would use a seal which bore the arms of one of the witnesses, or some other relative or friend.  It seems that the act of sealing was more important than the figures on the seal itself.

 

David

 
Chuck Glass
 
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Chuck Glass
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28 March 2008 18:29
 

Having spent many years in genealogical research I can tell you I’ve seen that on almost every legal document myself, usually on wills, marriage bonds, deeds and transfers.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen an actual "seal" either—it seems more like something that was standard legal verbiage that was included on documents.  Many times, they’d refer to "his mark" which sometimes meant a signature and sometimes was just represented by an "X."

 
ninest123
 
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ninest123
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07 May 2018 01:35
 

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