Hello there, I’m a relative beginner when it comes to Heraldry and Genealogy in general. I have been fortunate enough to find some decent resources on the web from where my family came from in France (genealogical societies over there who archive/post old registry books from the region).
In my research, I discovered that a distant relative wrote a book in 1944 about the genealogy of my family. It turns out, they were a branch that came to American around the revolutionary war. My particular branch came to America around 1880-1890 from Belfort, France. In this book, my distant relative wrote to my great-grandfather (who lived in New York at the time). Unfortunately, the whole letter wasn’t published, but it did mention that a coat of arms was registered by my family in Dijon, France. The only problem was, that was the part of the letter that was cut out… so now I’ve been on the hunt for some kind of registry of the arms with no luck. In the letter, though, I found out that my family was French Huguenots and was mentioned in the book French Blood in America (I looked, and could not find a specific reference to my name though).
Doing some digging in the Armorial General this morning, I found an entry for Bart (de). Though my last name is DeBard, it was changed from DeBart sometime in the 1800’s. I was wondering if anyone could provide a little insight and/or translation help into determining if this blason would be applicable to my family or not. Below is a cut/paste of the actual text in addition to a screenshot of the text on Page 122 of the Armorial.
Bart (de) — France. Tiercé en fasce, chaque compartiment
retiercé en fasce d’or, d’azur et d’arg.
Google’s poor attempt at translation:
Bart (of) - France. Tierced fascia, each compartment
retiercé per fess gold, azure and arg
Armorial General’s dictionary of some of the terms:
Tierce - Divided into three equal parts at Moven straight lines.
In this way, we obtain tierce band (11.22 - bars, chevron(III, 15, budding,
in fess (II,2), a peerage (III, 55), reversed a peerage (III, 57)
and PAL (I,50)) Weapons of White Hauterive escrowed are budding,
which means that the ECU the appearance of three patches of magnitude
dilferente lying on each other.
Fasce - Fascias covered by an even number. The barry ordinary six-room,
which is not necessary to state. If there is more or less, must indicate.
The barry cannot have more than eight pieces; above this number or call
barry. We found that each fess barry is another enamel.
Screenshot:
Damien Jax;75684 wrote:
Bart (de) — France. Tiercé en fasce, chaque compartiment
retiercé en fasce d’or, d’azur et d’arg.
Hello Damien
I can’t comment on whether or not you’d have a claim to these arms, but an English rendition of the blazon would be along the following lines:
Tierced per fess, each section tierced again per fess Or, Azure, and Argent.
In effect, the shield is divided into nine horizontal stripes of gold, blue, silver, gold, blue, silver, gold, blue, and silver.
There’s a coloured rendition (heavily watermarked) on
http://www.genealogie.com/v2/services-blasons/liste-blasons.asp
Well that’s a quick one to illustrate then. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’d be an easy way to verify if I had claim to that unless I can find some more info somewhere about it to corroborate.
hello Damien & welcome. great name by the way (my bros name and a couple of good saints there 
)
it’s not likely that you have a claim to them as i understand it, but i may be wrong.
you could always design arms that you’d assume for yourself based on these arms of course.
I’ve already thought about designing my own, however, after reading that letter written by my great-grandfather, it would have been neat to find the original blason.
I guess I have to sit myself down at Photoshop sometime when I have a moment and make one.
The book you’ve copied is not the authoritative Armorial Général de France, compiled pursuant to a royal order of 1696, but Rietstap’s Armorial General, a respected scholarly compilation of arms from across Europe, but not sufficient for your purposes. (Note, specifically, the location "France"—hardly specific enough to verify the use of these arms by a specific ancestor, which is what you need.)
The Armorial Général de France, in both the original manuscript as well as the published editions from the late 1800s, is available in the French National Library’s digital collection, gallica.bnf.fr. In the volume for the Generality of Burgundy, in the section for Châtillon-sur-Seine (83 km from Dijon), we find the following on page 288:
Quote:
De Chastenay, Antoine-Maurice, chevalier, Seigneur de Bricon, et Blanche de Bard, sa femme
Her arms are given as D’argent, à une fasce de sable, et trois lozanges de gueules, posées en chef, Argent a fess Sable in chief three lozenges Gules.
There may well be other de Bard/de Bart families in the AGF; I just checked for Burgundy and Franche-Comté, where Belfort is located. However, if you want to use this as a starting point, your task is to trace your male line back to a common ancestor with Blanche de Bard, wife of Antoine-Maurice de Chastenay, Seigneur de Bricon, circa 1700. Bon chasse.
Thank you for the information, I believe I’ve run across the mention of Blanche de Bard before, which is why I began focusing on the Dijon region.
The family is originally from Franche-Comte around Belfort and Montbeliard. I believe some went to the Dijon area, perhaps for religious reasons (Huguenots were not popular), I’ll have to look into that. I’ve traced the family back to about the late 1500’s, but have not completely filled in siblings, I’ve only done the males directly from me.
Looks like I have some more digging to do. It’s very difficult being several thousand miles away from the real documents and utilizing high school French to guide me.
may be difficult, but you seem to be doing a good job so far. good hunting.
You most likely have tried and searched
www.google.com and the book section of google .....
but have you searched
Livres section ???
Boy…"Thank You’s" are our days expensive and time consuming!
Damien Jax;75698 wrote:
Thank you for the information, I believe I’ve run across the mention of Blanche de Bard before, which is why I began focusing on the Dijon region.
The family is originally from Franche-Comte around Belfort and Montbeliard. I believe some went to the Dijon area, perhaps for religious reasons (Huguenots were not popular), I’ll have to look into that. I’ve traced the family back to about the late 1500’s, but have not completely filled in siblings, I’ve only done the males directly from me.
Looks like I have some more digging to do. It’s very difficult being several thousand miles away from the real documents and utilizing high school French to guide me.
Thanks again
.....I only can make a judgment for myself!
