Given recent debate on the existence of "proper" heraldry (however defined) in the US, I thought I’d see if I could find early references to heraldry (other than the oft quoted Washington-Barton correspondence). Here are three pieces of correspondence all concerning prominent legislators or officials. I’ll leave the American members to define which make it into the league of "Founding Fathers". NB I’m not sure if the John Hanson is *the* John Hanson or just *a* John Hanson.
In all three cases the people concerned have no problem with the concept of personal arms in the new republic and (in the case of Izard) have no problem distinguishing between heraldic and non-heraldic seals.
All extracts available on the Library of Congress website.
James
Quote:
Letters of Delegates to Congress: Volume 16 September 1, 1780 - February 28, 1781 John Hanson to Thomas Sim Lee
Dear sir
Philadelphia Nov. 18th. 1780
Your Carriage is finished. Exchange is now from 90 to 100 & rising
rapidly. You never gave any direction about having your Coat of Arms put on the Carriage. I have searched some Books of heraldry, Where I found the Arms for Lee Earl of Essex, Which I presume is the Arms of your family, & which I have odered to be painted on the Carriage. If it is wrong, you will be pleased to give your direction. The painter Says he Can make Any Alteration with little trouble, and no Expence to you. I think the Carriage will please you. No news.
With respect, I am, Dear sir, Your most humble Servt,
John Hanson
[P.S.] I hope you will have it in your power to Send me Some Conti[nentals] by the first Oppertunity, have not enough by me to pay one weeks board.
Quote:
The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, Volume 3
A. Lee to Jay.*
[Note *: * MSS. Dep. of State; 1 Sparks’ Dip. Rev. Corr., 581, with verbal changes.]
L’Orient, March 17, 1780.
Sir: I had not the honor of receiving your favor dated 26th of January till this day and at this place, where I am to embark as soon as the Alliance is ready. Your letter had a double seal upon it, the undermost scenting to be a head, and the one above being a coat of arms, but what I can not clearly make out. I mention this, that you may judge whether these seals were of your applying…
Quote:
The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, Volume 2
Izard to Henry Laurens.†
[Note †: † MSS. Dep. of State; 1 Sparks’ Dip. Rev. Corr., 665, with omissions.]
Paris, April 11, 1778.
Dear Sir: I send copies of my letters whenever I hear of an opportunity, in hopes of some of them getting safe to your hands…
I have the honor to be, etc.,
Ralph Izard.
P. S.—The seal that I shall make use of in all my letters to you will either be my coat of arms, which is on this, or a rattlesnake, with this motto, "Don’t tread on me."
The telling point in the first letter, to me, is the presumption that the client would want his arms painted on the carriage as the default choice.
James,
If by "the" John Hanson you mean the John Hanson who was the first president of Congress under the Articles of Confederation (better known in the Washington, D.C., area as the fellow for whom the John Hanson Freeway was named), yes, it was.
Thomas Sim Lee, however, was a member of the trans-Potomac branch of the same family as those other Lees from Virginia—first cousin to the signers of the Declaration of Independence Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee (and of the A[rthur] Lee mentioned in the second letter). As such I would imagine he used the arms of the Lees of Coton Hall, Shropshire, like his Virginia relatives (apparently without any right to them, although with the endorsement of John Gibbon, Bluemantle Pursuivant, who visited the Lee estate in Virginia in 1670). I have no idea who this alleged Lee Earl of Essex might have been.
John Jay, mentioned in letter #2, is said by Bolton to have borne "Argent a chevron Gules between in chief a demi-sun in splendor between two mullets [Argent?] and in base a bird [presumably a jay] perched on a rock," although Bolton’s note says Jay’s bookplate had an azure, not argent, field, and a gold chevron. He also used an armorial seal on the 1783 Treaty of Paris.
I believe Izard is probably Ralph Izard, whose hatchment is at St. James’s Church, Goose Creek, S.C., and who also used an armorial bookplate and seal. The Izard arms are "Argent six leopards’ faces 3, 2, 1 Gules. On the hatchment they’re quartered with Pryor, the latter erroneously being placed in the 1st and 4th quarters, apparently because the painter copied them from a signet ring on which everything was of course reversed.
There is a bookplate for a Laurens family of South Carolina with Sable three birds rising Argent, but Bolton doesn’t say if Henry Laurens himself used these arms.
These, of course, are all just the stray bits that were missed when the other Founding Fathers abolished heraldry.
Drawing of John Jay’s seal, from Katherine Schuyler Baxter’s biography of him, A Godchild of Washington.
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