For those interested in heraldry in the early days of the USA, I found reference to a document that may be of interest. It is the agreement by various landowners to convey to the President the lands that formed Washington DC. It would appear to have on it the seals of the following people.
Robert Peter
David Burnes
James M Lingan
Uriah Forrest
Benjamin Stoddert
Notley Young
David Carroll of Duddington
Overton Carr
David Beale of George
Charles Beatty
Anthony Holmead
William Young
Edward Peirce
Abraham Young
James Peirce
William Prout
Robert Peter (again or a different one?)
Benjamin Stoddert (for James Warren)
William King
Of course these seals may not be heraldic or the arms may already be well known.
The details of the document can be found in "District of Columbia original land owners, 1791-1800" by Wesley E. Pippenger, Heritage Books, 1999
ISBN 1585491535, 9781585491537
Unfortunately I can’t do anything about it myself (being in Scotland) but I thought it might be of interest.
James
Quote:
Of course these seals may not be heraldic or the arms may already be well known.
Can you explain this please? I thought all seals were heraldic, and are you saying that these men may have just assumed arms as well?
Greg;70971 wrote:
Can you explain this please? I thought all seals were heraldic, and are you saying that these men may have just assumed arms as well?
A seal is just a blob of wax which has been impressed with a design. The blob is either attached directly to the paper or to a ribbon which has been attached to the paper. The ribbon can also be used to secure a container. Creating an ornate design with which to impress the wax was a security feature, since seals were expensive and hard to obtain. Only the owner would be likely to have such a seal, so seeing the seal attached was a guarantee that the document was genuine.
There arose quite a skill set in slicing seals in two with a hot blade and then fusing back together again. It was the medieval form of forgery.
Some poorer folk used seals that were less ornate. Often they were not heraldic. They might just consist of the grantor’s initials within a circle.
It was often the legal requirement that documents had to be sealed, and in colonial America, since almost no one had a real seal, they simply drew a little rosette on the page beside the signature and wrote the word "seal" within the symbol. This meant the document had been "signed and sealed" and satisfied the legal requirement.
I haven’t seen the document James is referring to, but I would be very surprised if all the names actually had accompanying wax seals, and even more surprised if more than a few were heraldic—that is had any sort of shield motif.
Kind regards,
/Charles
Apparently we only know the text of this document from the copy in the records of the federal commissioners charged with laying out the new capital city, and of course this transcript wouldn’t have the actual seals. I haven’t had any luck in finding a location of the original, and it may well have been destroyed along with a great many other records when Admiral Cockburn burned Washington, DC, during the War of 1812.
Charles E. Drake;70972 wrote:
A seal is just a blob of wax which has been impressed with a design. The blob is either attached directly to the paper or to a ribbon which has been attached to the paper. The ribbon can also be used to secure a container. Creating an ornate design with which to impress the wax was a security feature, since seals were expensive and hard to obtain. Only the owner would be likely to have such a seal, so seeing the seal attached was a guarantee that the document was genuine.
There arose quite a skill set in slicing seals in two with a hot blade and then fusing back together again. It was the medieval form of forgery.
Some poorer folk used seals that were less ornate. Often they were not heraldic. They might just consist of the grantor’s initials within a circle.
It was often the legal requirement that documents had to be sealed, and in colonial America, since almost no one had a real seal, they simply drew a little rosette on the page beside the signature and wrote the word "seal" within the symbol. This meant the document had been "signed and sealed" and satisfied the legal requirement.
I haven’t seen the document James is referring to, but I would be very surprised if all the names actually had accompanying wax seals, and even more surprised if more than a few were heraldic—that is had any sort of shield motif.
Kind regards,
/Charles
(embolden mine)
Yes, Charles, thank you for taking the time with that. My larger question however concerns my highlited portion of your reply.
I understand that all seals had a mark of some sort pressed into wax. In your view then, what makes a seal heraldic and not heraldic. Also were there non-heraldic seals used by higher signatories in Europe as well?
Thanks again.
Three non-heraldic seals from the American presidents’ arms series, all from approximately the period of the document mentioned by James:
John Adams
http://americanheraldry.org/pages/uploads/President/ja-deer.jpg
Thomas Jefferson
http://americanheraldry.org/pages/uploads/President/tjseal.jpg
John Quincy Adams
http://americanheraldry.org/pages/uploads/President/adams-acorn.gif
James Monroe and Woodrow Wilson also used non-armorial seals, Monroe’s a shield outline with a script "M" and Wilson a plain oval with his name written in shorthand characters.
Joseph McMillan;71000 wrote:
Three non-heraldic seals from the American presidents’ arms series, all from approximately the period of the document mentioned by James:
John Adams
http://americanheraldry.org/pages/uploads/President/ja-deer.jpg
Thomas Jefferson
http://americanheraldry.org/pages/uploads/President/tjseal.jpg
John Quincy Adams
http://americanheraldry.org/pages/uploads/President/adams-acorn.gif
James Monroe and Woodrow Wilson also used non-armorial seals, Monroe’s a shield outline with a script "M" and Wilson a plain oval with his name written in shorthand characters.
Thank you. The question is: what makes them non-heraldic vs. heraldic? Secondly, do we have any heraldic seals connected to this document for display and contrast?
Greg;71008 wrote:
Thank you. The question is: what makes them non-heraldic vs. heraldic? Secondly, do we have any heraldic seals connected to this document for display and contrast?
As I said before, we don’t know whether the seals on the D.C. deed were heraldic or not, because no one seems to know the location of the original document (to which the seals were applied), or even if it still exists.
But a heraldic seal has a coat of arms on it, or at least a crest. Like this seal used by George Washington, dating to 1783:
http://americanheraldry.org/pages/uploads/President/wash-83.gif
Or this one, of John Adams (also 1783, used on the Treaty of Paris):
http://americanheraldry.org/pages/uploads/President/boyl-seal.jpg
See Zieber’s Heraldry in America for more examples.
Joseph McMillan;71012 wrote:
As I said before, we don’t know whether the seals on the D.C. deed were heraldic or not, because no one seems to know the location of the original document (to which the seals were applied), or even if it still exists.
But a heraldic seal has a coat of arms on it, or at least a crest. Like this seal used by George Washington, dating to 1783:
http://americanheraldry.org/pages/uploads/President/wash-83.gif
Or this one, of John Adams (also 1783, used on the Treaty of Paris):
http://americanheraldry.org/pages/uploads/President/boyl-seal.jpg
See Zieber’s Heraldry in America for more examples.
And this was true before the advent of heraldry in Europe as we know it?
Absolutely. Before the advent of heraldry in Europe as we know it, all the seals were non-heraldic. By definition.
James Dempster;70946 wrote:
Of course these seals may not be heraldic or the arms may already be well known.
At least one of the landowners did use arms. Robert Peter appears in our roll of early American arms: Argent a lion passant Gules surmounted of a sword palewise, on a chief Sable a boar’s head couped between a mullet and a crescent Argent. The source is Matthews American Armory.
Carroll of Duddington may have been a member of the same family as the Carrols of Doughoregan and Carrollton. If so, he probably used Argent two lions combatant Gules supporting a sword palewise proper.
No hits so far on any of the others.
I did some research into any use of arms by Benjamin Stoddert; most of you may remember he was the first United States Secretary of the Navy (serving in this capacity from May 1798 to March 1801). In the sources I checked there is no mention of him using arms. None appear on letters, bookplates, or even his headstone in the cemetery at Addison Chapel, Seat Pleasant, Maryland.
I will dig a bit more… but the evidence of B. Stoddert even using arms just doesn’t seem to be there.
