JBGarrison;67859 wrote:

Still, I can see the value of having NEHGS publishing a roll with Lib of Congress.

NEHGS does not publish newly assumed arms in its Roll.

I don’t mean this to sound snippy, but it would save a lot of repetition in the forum if folks would explore the rest of the website, where answers to these kinds of things can be found.  For example, at http://www.americanheraldry.org/pages/index.php?n=Registration.Domestic#toc7 we find that

Quote:

Arms registered with the committee (i.e., those in the first category, those brought to the United States before 1917) are periodically published in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, then subsequently collected and printed in separate pamphlets under the title A Roll of Arms, Registered by the Committee on Heraldry of the New England Historical Genealogical Society.

And that other arms, including those newly assumed, are recorded, not registered, and thus not published in the Roll.

Thankyou Mister McMillan for clarifying that.  I had indeed read that article before, yet missed it on the first pass that the NEHGS only registers and publishes arms in it’s pamphlet’s of "the first category."

So when it comes to recent personal assumption, NEHGS in my newly informed opinion seems to act as a (very old) $25 safe deposit box for blazons.

/redundancy

JBGarrison;67885 wrote:

So when it comes to recent personal assumption, NEHGS in my newly informed opinion seems to act as a (very old) $25 safe deposit box for blazons.

Not entirely…

(a) The NEHGS Committee on Heraldry is a respected scholarly body (the oldest private heraldic institution in the world).  Recording arms with the committee is widely recognized in heraldic circles as evidence of a serious effort to ensure that a new assumption doesn’t infringe the rights of others.

(b) If we think of the future and not just ourselves, having our arms on file in the archives of a major genealogical research institution provides a way for our descendants to discover and be able to document what will, by then, be "ancient arms."  This was the principal purpose of establishing the COH’s registering and recording system in the first place.  As the 1914 report of the committee said, making the case for recording newly assumed arms:

Quote:

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But the use of such arms would be purged of all falsehood if the practice of using them were recognized and if the facts were made a matter of quasi-public record in the archives of a Society like this. In such a practice many advantages will be perceived by those who feel as the members of your Committee feel, that, while an old coat possesses dignity and sentimental value merely by reason of its age, any coat, whether new or old, may acquire a truer dignity and a more substantial value by reason of the character and qualities of those who have borne it in more recent times or by reason of the character and qualities of one who bears it in our own day and generation.

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This position didn’t prevail immediately, but it did within a few years.