My mother has been digging at the roots of her family tree and recently discovered a branch of the family that emigrated from Glasgow to America sometime before 1772.  If I counted correctly, then they are my 6th-great-grandparents.  :p

This is much, much earlier than the previous branches that we had discovered, which emigrated from Ireland during the Great Famine (1845-52) and from Germany after the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71).

I don’t know what implcations this could have for my assumed arms…

steven harris;98191 wrote:

My mother has been digging at the roots of her family tree and recently discovered a branch of the family that emigrated from Glasgow to America sometime before 1772.

I don’t know what implcations this could have for my assumed arms...

If they were Scots, and you decide, voluntarily, to follow Scottish heraldic conventions, probably very little.  In most cases that I’m aware of matrilineal descent has little effect on a man’s coat armor, unless he takes her surname and then inherits her arms.

A great case in point is Merlin Hay, the Earl of Erroll.  His father was (and his younger brother is) Chief of the Moncrieffes, although he took his mother’s surname to succeed her as Chief of the Hays.

You might (or might not) want to add some reference to this maternal ancestry, but unless you change your surname to match that line (as noted above) your arms should still primarily signify your particular line of Harrises.

On a practical & artistic level, IMO your current arms are too nice to change willy-nilly.

Further digging has discovered that a son of the Gordon’s (the couple that immigrated from Glasgow) married the direct male-line gr-grandduaghter of Richard Duke, who arrived here in 1633/4 aboard The Ark with Leonard Calvert, the first Governor of the Maryland Colony.

Looks like there may well have been a armiger hiding out in my family tree all along.  :p

Very interesting!

Michael F. McCartney;98275 wrote:

On a practical & artistic level, IMO your current arms are too nice to change willy-nilly.

You honor me, sir.  I have no intention of changing my arms - I rather like them as they are.  The very most that I would consider is quartering them if it ever turned out that my mother came from an armigerious line (we know, or at least relatively certain that my father does not).  But that seems unlikely at best, so my arm will remain as-is.

steven harris;98282 wrote:

The very most that I would consider is quartering them if it ever turned out that my mother came from an armigerious line (we know, or at least relatively certain that my father does not).  But that seems unlikely at best, so my arm will remain as-is.

If your mother came from an armigerous line and you wanted to add her arms quartered, shouldn’t they be quartered with your father’s arms? Am I remembering correctly that he has arms from the ACH? Or at least your arms in in 1 and 4 with your dad’s and mom’s in 2 and 3 respectively?

Kenneth Mansfield;98284 wrote:

If your mother came from an armigerous line and you wanted to add her arms quartered, shouldn’t they be quartered with your father’s arms? Am I remembering correctly that he has arms from the ACH? Or at least your arms in in 1 and 4 with your dad’s and mom’s in 2 and 3 respectively?

Since I am perfectly happy with my arms as they are now, we’ll have to see what mom’s arms look like first

If they were granted before 1973 they’ll be in the published ordinaries which I can look up for you if you can give the name of the branch or the original grantee.

James