Hello, folks. Great site here.

I’ve just joined and introduced myself in the "Introductions" section, so for now I’ll just get to the point: I’ve started a search for a supposed "family coat of arms" (and castle) I’ve been hearing about all my life. The family name is Cole, from East England. I’ve just opened an Ancestry.com account and I’ve already (in one hour) found a goldmine of related and information. I guess some cousin of mine is also interested in our family roots, so lucky me. A lot of the leg work is done. I have a pile of names, dates and other info.

So far, I’m back to the late 1700s. Not bad for an hour’s work. so I have two questions:

1. Do you guys know where/how one might relate that family search to something that would lead to family arms? What’s next? Maybe I need to contact a heraldry or genealogy society in England?

2. You can supposedly find "your family crest" on Google, and they will sell you T-shirts and coffee cups with "your" arms imprinted on them. What are the odds that any of that has anything to do with my actual family? Where did they get that info? Isn’t it more likely that there are a ka-billion different Cole families with a ka-billion different arms? Or is it possible that there’s any truth to what they are selling on those websites?

Thanks for any info. I’m a total beginner here, so anything helps. I look forward to getting to know you people as my interest in this goes beyond finding my own family arms - I’m just find the topic itself completely fascinating.

Thanks.

Update: I’ve just sent an inquiry via the College of Arms website (http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk).

We’ll see if they turn anything up. Has anyone contacted them for information before?

Thanks again.

Another update.

And I hope it isn’t too much bother if I’m documenting my journey here. I imagine if you’re reading any of this you’re at least somewhat interested. Maybe some future user will be able to benefit by re-tracing my steps (or avoiding my mistakes).

So… I’ve found a heraldry society in England (http://www.theheraldrysociety.com). At least they answered this question for me:

Basically at this point you should be focused on genealogical research.

After you have the list of Coles you were descended from you can fairly easily check to find out whether any of them had Arms registered with the College all legal-like. If they were state-side, or they were using unregistered Arms in England (which was technically illegal) you’ll need to find some documentation of them using the Arms. This isn’t as hard as you’d think. Frequently Arms will be mentioned in a will or other genealogical docume0.nt, and even if they weren’t things like silverware and books in the family library will tend to have the Arms on them.

The castle/Arms stories are probably highly exaggerated. Stories don’t get less impressive as they are handed down to the generations. My family, for example, is under the impression that the only reason we’re not Dukes in Sweden is because g-g-grandpa Adamson got swindled out of a lumber business by his partner. Which is impossible on so many levels we could have an entire thread devoted to it.

I wouldn’t be shocked to find out you have Arms somewhere, because you didn’t have to be particularly wealthy to qualify for them, but there aren’t a lot of real castles in England. To my knowledge all were held by either the Crown or very high nobleman, and there don’t seem to be any noble Coles in England in the right timeframe. The Irish Earls of Enniskillen are Coles, but they had a mansion not a castle.

Have you looked at our resources for researching ancestral arms?  See http://www.americanheraldry.org/pages/index.php?n=Main.Ancestral, and specifically the page of resources for England, http://www.americanheraldry.org/pages/index.php?n=Ancestral.England

We probably need to update the list of resources, as more has been put online since I wrote the page, but it will give you a start.

Unlike Nick, I would say the odds are very much against your finding anything, if only because a small minority of people in any country, and especially in the British Isles, ever had them.  But it’s worth the hunt.  I recently found a whole raft of people back up the line on my mother’s father’s mother’s side who had arms, but I’m not entitled to any of them.

,,,and whether or not you find an officially (or otherwise) armigerous Cole ancestor, the knowledge of your true ancestry is it’s own reward!

And assuming per Joe’s posting that finding ancestral arms is a long shot, if you then decide to design & adopt new arms for yourself and/or your own line of American Coles. you may find relevant themes - i.e. relevant to you & your own Cole cousins - that you might consider reflecting in your new design.  For example, if your Coles were connected with a particular location, trade, accomplishment or other family tradition on this side of the pond, some visual reference (e.g. a relevant tool, or a charge alluding to a place, etc) might be useful elements to consider including in some way.  So if hypothetically your immigrant ancestor was a silversmith or cabinetmaker who used a personal hallmark on his work, that might be worth including as meaningful to your line, whether or not it would mean anything to other lines of Coles here or abroad.

But that’s just one possble approach to designing new arms—there are any number of other possible approaches.

And at this point, that’s all putting the cart before the horse!  First determine who & what your & yoer family were/are, then play with design ideas.

Cool. Thanks for the info. I’ll follow those leads for sure. The Google Books look promising. Today I found a 422 page PDF, originally published in 1830, with pedigrees of Sussex and some arms for Cole. This is the same design you see all over Google if you look up "Cole coat of arms" - which makes me skeptical.

http://sussexfamilies.com/html/cole.html

My own geneological resereach only gets me back to about 1812, but I’ve just started. My grandfather was a Sussex native and his family line is all in the area. Maybe they have more records over there…

Interestingly, today I visited an 89-year old cousin of my father’s. She gave me some documents that were assembled by her grandmother (who lived 1875-1911) some years ago. Included was this, written on an old, yellowed paper:

"per pale Or and Argent. A bull passant within a bordure sable, on a chief of the third, three bezants. Crest: a semi-dragon vert. beading in his dexter paw a javelin armed or, feathered argent"

Now, I have no idea where granny got that info, but it was before there were scads of online vendors hawking coffee-cups-of-arms…

Interesting, anyway. Is there a reverse lookup with the College of Arms, perhaps?

I’m afraid to say that 1875 is still well within the time frame for "scads of online vendors hawking coffee-cups-of-arms" except they were offline and offering silver plate with engraved arms, signet rings or heraldic stationery.

I’ve recently been working on the arms used by some Scots in 17th and 18th century Danzig and there are certainly a number of them that appear to come from that type of source, including a Yeffries who does not use Scottish Jaffray/Jeffrey/Jeffries arms (variations on Paly and a fess…) but the arms (with minor tincture changes) of Judge Jeffries, who came from the Welsh marches.

The earlier "heraldic stationers" were probably all using the same sort of sources as the online vendors of today, namely books such as Burkes General Armory (a very probable source of the arms you mention - though I’m not within easy access of my copy at the moment).

As for a reverse lookup, your best bet are the Grantees of Arms volumes by the Harleian Society. To quote the UK Society of Genealogists.

Quote:

There is no complete printed list of families granted arms in England prior to 1687 but an index of many surviving grants from that early period will be found in Grantees of Arms (Harleian Society, vol. 66, 1915). For the period 1687-1898, the great majority of persons to whom grants of arms were made are listed in Grantees of Arms II (Harleian Society, vols. 67 and 68, 1916-17). These do not describe the arms granted.

These volumes are available from archive.org.

Since they tell you only the grantee, not the arms, it can take a bit of detective work to marry up the two.

James

daverham;100969 wrote:

Interestingly, today I visited an 89-year old cousin of my father’s. She gave me some documents that were assembled by her grandmother (who lived 1875-1911) some years ago. Included was this, written on an old, yellowed paper:

"per pale Or and Argent. A bull passant within a bordure sable, on a chief of the third, three bezants. Crest: a semi-dragon vert. beading in his dexter paw a javelin armed or, feathered argent"

One of the wonderful things about technology is that you can Google a blazon and see what turns up. And what turns up is exactly what you’d expect of a 19th century heraldic engraver or 21st century online arms vendor: verbatim but incomplete quotation from one of the standard collections of historic English arms. In this case it’s John Guillim’s Display of Heraldry, originally published about 1610 but reissued in revised editions until 1724—an excellent source but like all of them vulnerable to abuse.  Google Books has the 6th and last edition on line, and it contains the following , as punctuated in the original:

"Party per Pale Or and Argent, a Bull passant, within a Bordure Sable, on a Chief of the Third, three Bezants, is born by the name of Cole…"

What is left out of the paper whoever gave Granny is the rest of Guillim’s sentence:

"...and was granted to Richard Cole, Esq; of Shenley-hall in the County of Hertford, and at the Date hereof High Sheriff of the said County, by Sir John Borough Garter, the 27th of November 1640."

So these are your arms if you are a direct male-line descendant of the Richard Cole of Shenley Hall, Herts, who was sheriff of Hertfordshire in 1640.

The same edition of Guillim also includes two other coats of Cole that include bulls and bezants:

- "Argent, a Bull passant Sable, armed Or, within a Bordure of the Second Bezantee, is born by the Name of Cole; and was confirm’d or allow’d to William Cole, Son of William, Son of Thomas Cole, all of London, descended from a second Son of ....... Cole of Strake in Devon."

- "He beareth Argent, a Bull passant Sable, collared and armed Or, within a Bordure of the Second Bezantee, by the Name also of Cole.  This Coat was assign’d to Solomon Cole of Lyffe in the County of Southampton, who married Mary Daughter and Heir of Thomas Deering of Lyffe."

Note that in all these cases Guillim has identified the specific person to whom the arms given were granted or confirmed.  That’s what you need for one of these sources to be really useful.

Thanks so much for the additional info! This is priceless. I will follow up with all those links and leads, to be sure - and post any progress or questions that may arise.

You guys are awesome.

daverham;100974 wrote:

Thanks so much for the additional info! This is priceless. I will follow up with all those links and leads, to be sure - and post any progress or questions that may arise.

You guys are awesome.

Well, yes, I suppose we are, but to go back to the point Mike McCartney made:  what you really need to do at this point is NOT to follow these leads.  If you start doing genealogy knowing where you want to end up, you’re almost sure to get there, and the lineage will be a mess of fiction and fantasy—not necessarily yours, but products of the imaginations of those who have gone before you.

That’s why you start with yourself and work backward, holding yourself to high standards of proof for each link.  When you’re confident in the male line ancestor you get to before, say 1650 or so, then it makes sense to start looking in the heraldic resources to see if there’s a match that is persuasive, but you still need to demand proof.  I’d lay odds that if you can trace your line back to 1640, you’ll find someone in the family named either William or Richard Cole.  But they won’t necessarily be the William and Richard who bore the arms cited by Guillim.