I promised in David Pope’s thread to share some of my design work from the process of developing my arms. It turns out I didn’t keep the initial ideas for the shield, but here are three crest designs I thought of and then discarded:

1. "From a wreath of the colors a dexter and a sinister hand issuant each holding a bayonet the blades crossed in saltire proper." For my McMillan ancestors service in the 10th Alabama Infantry.

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeohzt4/heraldry/McMillan/bayonetcrest.gif

2. "From a wreath of the colors three U.S. Air Force guidons (Azure upon a thunderbolt fesswise an eagle wings elevated Or) flying from their pikes pilewise proper." For my father’s command of the 670th and 750th Aircraft Control and Warning Squadrons and the 620th Tactical Control Squadron.

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeohzt4/heraldry/McMillan/guidoncrest.gif

3. "On a wreath of the colors a wool-booger passant Or striped Sable face and chest Argent, mouth and eye Gules, paws proper Armed Gules grasping in his dexter forepaw a broken arrow proper and an annulet Gules." For the 620th TCS.  (The USAF blazons this "a wool-booger proper," and explains the beast as having the body of a tiger, the claws of a monkey, the head of a crocodile, and the ears of a rabbit.)

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeohzt4/heraldry/McMillan/woolbooger-crest.gif

I rather like the wool-booger, tho’ the name sounds like something from "The Simpsons."

But all in all, the crest you finally did adopt is IMO a better choice—both artistically and for its dual symbolism of similarity to your chief’s crest & the local image of the Indian war club.

I agree wholeheartedly with Mike.  Incidentally, why the war club?  Do you have Native American/American Indian ancestry?  Does your blazon specify the war club of a particular group such as Mohawk or Oneida?  I forgot.

eploy;81297 wrote:

I agree wholeheartedly with Mike.  Incidentally, why the war club?  Do you have Native American/American Indian ancestry?  Does your blazon specify the war club of a particular group such as Mohawk or Oneida?  I forgot.

In the other post Mr. McMillan mentioned that the area of his family was also home to early Creek Indians which the war club alluded to?

JBGarrison;81298 wrote:

In the other post Mr. McMillan mentioned that the area of his family was also home to early Creek Indians which the war club alluded to?

Exactly.  The earliest McMillan ancestor I’ve been able to trace settled on land that he bought from a Muscogee (Creek) Indian shortly after the tribe ceded the territory to the U.S. government in 1832.

Joe wrote: "The earliest McMillan ancestor I’ve been able to trace settled on land that he bought from a Muscogee (Creek) Indian shortly after the tribe ceded the territory to the U.S. government in 1832."

At least your umpty-great grandpa had the decency to actually buy the land, rather than just squat on it, even if it was a bit of a fire sale.

Reminds me of the late 1500’s in Scotland (Galloway anyway) when the abbots or commendators sold (feued) some of their abbey land to their sitting tenants before the Protestant government could confiscate it & feu it out to strangers (supporters of the new order).  The abbey’s former tenants gained heritable tenure (think "bonnet lairds"), the monks picked up wads of portable wealth (hard to carry all that dirt into exile!), and whatever they would have called what we would call carpet-baggers got the extended single digit.

Ironically the tables turned in a century or so, when the by-then-doggedly-Presbyterian descendants of some of those bonnet lairds were themselves dispossessed by Bloody Claverhouse and the lands purchased by the descendants [in spirit if not blood] of those earlier disappointed carpetbaggii—including, I regret to say (but at least remotely on-topic), the heraldic writer Mackenzie of Rosehaugh.

As Ed Miller sings, "I’m a rambler…"—sorry ‘bout that!

I’m not sure if it was decency or necessity.  My impression from looking at the General Land Office records is that there was a middleman involved.  As far as I can tell, the way it worked was that upon ceding the land by treaty, each head of household in the tribe got a warrant good for a personal land grant of some number of acres.  Most of the Indians sold these rights to various and sundry speculators, who then resold them to people who actually wanted to settle the land.  I may have this totally wrong.

(Another ancestor on the same general side of the family was a major buyer of land directly from the Indians, but he seems to have been accumulating for long-term capital growth and not merely short-term speculation, and still owned most of it—10,000 acres plus, almost all undeveloped—when he died 20 years later.)

Joseph McMillan;81299 wrote:

Exactly.  The earliest McMillan ancestor I’ve been able to trace settled on land that he bought from a Muscogee (Creek) Indian shortly after the tribe ceded the territory to the U.S. government in 1832.

Your ancestor probably bought these lands from the Creek families just after the implementation of the Treaty of Cusseta in 1832. The Creeks had no understanding of the monetary value of land and were thus under-paid for their individual properties by land speculators. The first seven years of the 1830’s brought about what we would call today a real estate bubble of enormous proportions. The land parcels were bought mainly with paper notes issued by state chartered banks (with little to no real backing). In 1837, President Jackson required that the purchase of Federal lands be in gold and or silver coin, in order to protect the government from the state banks’ speculation and fraud. The state banks themselves then refused to pay depositors in coin (known at the time as The Suspension of Specie) after which no one wanted their paper notes and thus the second worst US depression came about. The Panic of 1837 lasted through 1843. During this period the phrase "Gone to Texas" once again became a common sight to county sheriffs in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana but that is another story.

David Pritchard;81330 wrote:

Your ancestor probably bought these lands from the Creek families just after the implementation of the Treaty of Cusseta in 1832. The Creeks had no understanding of the monetary value of land and were thus under-paid for their individual properties by land speculators.

Exactly. My McMillan ancestor’s patent says "Whereas Ti-ho-gey, one of the Creek Tribe of Indians, by virtue of a treaty between the United States and the said Creek Tribe of Indians, made the 24th day of March 1832, became entitled, out of the lands ceded to the United States by the said treaty, to [legal description of the land] which said tract, with the approbation of the President of the United States, has been duly sold and assigned to Micajah B. Casey by the said Ti-ho-gey, as appears in the conveyance thereof, dated the nineteenth day of December 1834, approved by the President of the United States the 6th day of January 1840…and the said tract having been duly assigned to Daniel McMillan, NOW KNOW YE, that the United States of America, in consideration of the premises and in conformance with the provisions of the said Treaty, HAVE GIVEN AND GRANTED and by these presents do GIVE AND GRANT unto the said Daniel McMillan and to his heirs the said tract…" The patent is dated 17 May 1842, but it is clear that Daniel and family were occupying the property several years earlier.

My land speculator/investor 4 x great grandfather, Job Taylor, was buying land in Alabama as early as 1824 through the usual purchase process, no doubt with Georgia or Alabama state paper, but also something like 14,000 acres from Creek Indians under the 1832 treaty.  According to the 1896 book Memoirs of Georgia, "It was often remarked of him that Job Taylor came nearer ‘serving God and mammon’ than any man of his time."  So I’m confident that he didn’t pay the Indians (or anyone else) a penny more than he had to.