Is anyone aware of whether the Dutch Patroons of New Netherlands bore arms?  I’m thinking of people/families like

Kiliaen van Rensselear of the Manor of Rensselaerswyck,

Stephanus Van Cortlandt of Cortlandt Manor,

Frederick Philipse of Philipsburg Manor,

Pieter Schuyler of Schuyler Manor &

Robert Livingston the Elder of Livingston Manor.

Were they granted arms along with their patroonships or did they simply assume arms, or did they just use merchant-mark type of seals (as seemed to be the case with the Manor of Rensselaerswyck)?  See:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manor_of_Rensselaerswyck.

Thanks in advance for sharing.

eploy;71579 wrote:

Is anyone aware of whether the Dutch Patroons of New Netherlands bore arms?

Yes. All of those you list except the Livingstons are in our roll of early American arms, http://americanheraldry.org/pages/index.php?n=Main.Roll. The Livingston arms appear in our collection of arms of signers of the Declaration of Independence, noting that different members of the family over the years used different quarterings. http://americanheraldry.org/pages/index.php?n=Notable.Declaration

Quote:

Were they granted arms along with their patroonships or did they simply assume arms, or did they just use merchant-mark type of seals (as seemed to be the case with the Manor of Rensselaerswyck)? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manor_of_Rensselaerswyck.

Thanks in advance for sharing.

Most of those you list were (as your subject line indicates) Dutch, and thus presumably assumed arms as was and is the norm in the Netherlands. There was no arms-granting authority that could have issued arms in connection with the land grants.  The Livingstons were Scottish and presumably assumed arms at some time in the distant pre-Lyon Register past, but their arms were matriculated at Edinburgh.

Joseph McMillan;71582 wrote:

Yes. All of those you list except the Livingstons are in our roll of early American arms, http://americanheraldry.org/pages/index.php?n=Main.Roll. The Livingston arms appear in our collection of arms of signers of the Declaration of Independence . . .

Joseph, thanks for that.  I didn’t see this page before.  It’s a wonderful resource.  Thank you (and others) for putting it together.

Joseph McMillan;71582 wrote:

Most of those you list were (as your subject line indicates) Dutch, and thus presumably assumed arms as was and is the norm in the Netherlands. There was no arms-granting authority that could have issued arms in connection with the land grants.

I know that in the Netherlands it has been the practice to assume arms.  Even the nobility did it.  But, has this always been the case?

eploy;71583 wrote:

I know that in the Netherlands it has been the practice to assume arms. Even the nobility did it. But, has this always been the case?

I’ll let Ton de Witte or others answer more authoritatively, but I believe it has, except for a brief period under Spanish control.

On the question about the "seal" of Rensselaerwyck(actually more likely a mark to put on products and property of the estate), I’d point out that the arms of Rensselaer on the map to which you provide a link are the same as those in the first quarter of the arms blazoned in our roll.

Map:

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeohzt4/heraldry/Rensselaer map.jpg

Stained glass window from church in Albany, now in Metropolitan Museum, New York:

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeohzt4/heraldry/rensselaer window.jpg

As far I know it always has been the case. A granting college never came about because the Netherlands as and entity did not exist it was a territory wich was made up out of all kinds of lordships, baronies, counties, dukedoms etc. who all had their own laws and customs.

The Spanish rule actually was no Spanish rule at all it just so happend to be that the king of Spain emperor Charles V also was the lord, count, duke etc. in nearly all of these territories. His son Philip II of Spain tried to make into a single entity but because of the revolt and subsequent seccesion war (80 years of it) this did not happen.

Philip II did establish a heralds college in the southern territories but this college had no power in the north because of the revolt. Nevertheless some people from the north consulted the college for heraldic/genealogical information and were given that information (one or two kings of arms were found guilty of excepting bribes so the information was sometimes made up to give the family of the applicant a more sophisticated past).

Nowadays arms are not granted but registered by the High Council of the Nobility and only the arms of the noble families and civic arms.

The original arms of Renselaer are: Gules a cross argent.

As shown in the 1st. quarter of the arms in the stained glass window of the church in Albany.

[Centraal Bureau Genealogie,, GHS 50A32, J.M. de Lange, Wapenboek van veele Edele Nederlandse Families en van andere in 4 quartieren gesteld met de wapens in couleuren, deel 1, blz. 114a]

The 2nd. quarter shows the arms of Pafraet: Argent an embattled fess azure.

[Centraal Bureau Genealogie, GHS 50A32, J.M. de Lange, Wapenboek van veele Edele Nederlandse Families en van andere in 4 quartieren gesteld met de wapens in couleuren, deel 1, blz. 115]

There are arms of Cortlandt in the Collection Muschart: A seal depicting a hand-or footbow.

I am not certain if this family is related to the patroon Stephan van Cortlandt.

[Centraal Bureau Genealogie, Collectie Muschardt, 82L: Hand-, voetboog]

There are also arms of Schuyler in the Collection Muschart: A seal depicting an arm with object (sword?) reaching out of the clouds.

Again I am not certain if this family is related to the patroon Pieter Schuyler.

[Centraal Bureau Genealogie, Collectie Muschardt, 49I: Arm (uit wolk) met voorwerp in de hand]

There are several seals of the arms of Philipse in the Collections of the Centraal Bureau voor Genealogie in The Hague, Netherlands. Research has to proof if these are related to the patroon Frederick Philipse.

Padberg Evenboer;71729 wrote:

There are also arms of Schuyler in the Collection Muschart: A seal depicting an arm with object (sword?) reaching out of the clouds.

I wonder if it could be a hawk perched on a fist.  This is the 1656 bookplate of Philip Pieterszen Schuyler from the collection of the New York Public Library:

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeohzt4/heraldry/Schuyler-NYPL.jpg

It’s easy to imagine an artist thinking that an arm issuing from the flank is just as good as an arm issuing out of a cloud issuing from the flank.

I think Filijp (Phillip) Pietersen Schuijler must be the son of Pieter Schuijler.

So the unidentified object is a bird of prey used for falconry. And this particular bird (hawk or falcon) is wearing a blinder.

Joseph McMillan;71730 wrote:

This is the 1656 bookplate of Philip Pieterszen Schuyler from the collection of the New York Public Library…

Correction; it is not a bookplate but a woodcut copy of the arms as they appeared on the Schuyler window in the old Dutch Reformed Church in Albany, NY:

According to George Washington Schuyler, Colonial New York: Philip Schuyler and His Family:

Quote:

For the purpose of adding to the "church adornments," some of its richer members were permitted to have their armorial bearings painted upon its windows. Among them were the Patroon Van Rensselaer, Wendel, Schuyler, and Andries Herbitsen Constaple Van der Blaas. The arms of the latter covered twelve lights of a large window. Schuyler’s were painted on one large central light of another. When the church was demolished, the paintings were put into the new one. When this was taken down, in 1806, the arms were preserved by the families to whom they belonged. I saw the Schuyler arms in 1877. The glass had been broken by a careless artist, who was making a copy. The pieces had been carefully arranged and held in place by cement. It was in the hands of a lineal descendant, who valued it highly. Some two years afterward it was broken by an accident into minute fragments, some of which were lost, so that it could not be reconstructed. Happily copies had been made, and the accompanying woodcut gives an exact representation.

This is why the Schuyler arms and those of Rensselaer earlier in this thread are in the same style—they come from the same ultimate source, the 1656 Dutch Church in Albany.

Joseph McMillan;71749 wrote:

This is why the Schuyler arms and those of Rensselaer earlier in this thread are in the same style—they come from the same ultimate source, the 1656 Dutch Church in Albany.

Now I see they are from the same Dutch-American artist Evert Duyckinck.

I just ran across these Delafield arms which shows quarterly of 6: Delafield, Hallett, Livingston (grand quarterly: 1 & 4 Livingston, 2 & 3 Callendar), Schuyler, Livingston/Callendar again, and Beeckman; all impaling, quarterly, 1 & 4, White; 2 & 3, Wetmore.

We have once again the Schuyler arms and the arms of the patroon Robert Livingston.

http://nltaylor.net/sketchbook/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/bookplate5.jpg

And here the Livingston arms. A scottisch noble family.

http://www.falkirklocalhistorysociety.co.uk/images/earls arms.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3484/3733929361_73066236c7.jpg

They restored the Rensselaer arms then in this older picture the helmet is upsite down.