Carolina Herald

[sebn...@gmail.com]

Hi all,

Here is a link to a short article about Laurence Cromp, Carolina Herald: http://library.sc.edu/file/703#page=13

It reads, in part: "...the Lords Proprietors in 1705 appointed Laurence Cromp, Esq., of Worcester to the position of Carolina Herald, with power to grant arms to the landgraves and cassiques. How many grants of arms Cromp, who died in 1715, may have made is uncertain, but the North Carolina Department of Archives and History holds one such document executed by the Carolina Herald by whose authority Christopher DeGraffenreid was appointed landgrave..."

I've read that there is no known evidence that Cromp made any grants of arms, but I found this above reference intriguing. I found an entry on Worldcat that references a "document appointing Christopher DeGraffenreid to the title of Landgrave, a position within the governing hierarchy of the Carolina colony...the document is illustrated with images of emblems of status assigned to Graffenreid within the text: a coat of arms, robes, sunburst pendant on a purple ribbon, a gold chain, and other emblems of nobility. Original document held at North Carolina Dept. of Archives and History..."
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/31028775

I've place an order with the North Carolina State Archives to obtain a high resolution color scan of this document. I hope to discover if this document may be considered a grant of arms. In the meantime, I've located a book titled "The De Graffenreid family scrap book: 1191-1956." This book contains a number of illustrations, including one that appears to possibly be a reproduction of this grant by Carolina Herald from the North Carolina State Archives. Luckily, there is a digital version of the book online:
https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE928182

The book includes illustrations of a Graffenreid patent of arms dated 1660 from Saxony (pages 167-168), an image of what I think may be the grant from Carolina Herald (page 180) and what looks like an impression of Christopher DeGraffenreid's seal (page 185).

Here is a picture of the "grant": heraldryjunkyard.tumblr.com/image/132511460692

And here is a picture of the seal: http://heraldryjunkyard.tumblr.com/post/132511510327

The grant from Carolina Herald on page 180 is extremely difficult to read, but unless I am mistaken it does appear to grant a coat of arms, among other things. I think I can make out the bottom portion of the document to read as follows: "...know ye therefore that I the said Carolina Herald, by virtue of the Power and Authority granted to me by my Comission or Patent as ... above mentioned ... by that Presents give, grant and assign to the said Christopher De Graffenried Landgrave of Carolina ... ... Glory Four Coats Quarterly, First On a Ragged Staff ... ... and fired ... as the ancient Arms of his Family Second Gules a Lions head Erased Argent, third Argent a Bear's head Erased Sable, the Fourth as the first, And over the Escutcheon of the said Arms a Landgrave's Cap of Honor, as in the Margin ... they are more plainly depicted ... Given under my hand and Seal this Eighth day of August One Thousand Seven Hundred and Nine.
Lau. Cromp Carolina Herald..."

According to the American Heraldry Society website, Christopher de Graffenried's ancestral arms were "Or upon a trimount Vert a tree stump Sable burning at the top between two stars of six points Gules." If my reading of the above grant is correct, the arms granted by Carolina Herald featured these ancestral arms in the first and fourth quarters. Indeed, the seal shown on page 185 appears to show a similarly quartered coat. Unfortunately there is no indication of where the original of this seal may be found today.
Here is a modern depiction of these quartered arms I found online: http://www.degraffenreid.org/images/166_NewWorldArmsWeb.gif

http://www.degraffenreid.org/pages/5/index.htm

I still need to receive the scan from the North Carolina State Archives to properly transcribe the document, but in the meantime can anyone here make out any of the other words?

Thanks!

-Sebastian Nelson
sebn...@gmail.com

[sebn...@gmail.com]

Here is a link to an article from 1893 in Archivum heraldicum: https://archive.org/stream/bub_gb_3BQYAAAAYAAJ#page/n543/mode/1up

Unfortunately I cannot read German, but it appears to describes Graffenreid's quartered arms? Can anyone here help me translate the blazon and the footnote? I wonder if it agrees with the blazon given in the "grant"?

-Seb

[Peter Howarth]

My reading of the last sentence of the article is:

"We also understand that he bore a quartered coat of arms: 1. and 4. Graffenried, 2. on red, a silver lion's head erased, 3. on silver, a brown bear's head erased; resting on the shield is a Landgraf's coronet, the whole surrounded by a collar, probably of the Order of the Golden Sun, with straight and wavy [literally flaming] golden rays. 1)

1) Footnote: These arms are taken from a valuable little handpainted Bernese armorial, which its owner, Herr Eugen von Jenner-Pigott, Advocate, has kindly shared with me."

Peter Howarth

[Robert E. Hogan]

On Tuesday, November 3, 2015 at 6:52:42 PM UTC-8, sebn...@gmail.com wrote:

Hi,

I was curious if there has been any update on the scan of the grant or where it might be available. I am doing some research on the Carolina Herald and this could be very useful in this project.

Thanks for your time!

[Sebastian Nelson]

Yeah I obtained a color scan of this documents from the State Archives of North Carolina back in 2015. Be sure to look at this book: https://www.worldcat.org/title/794319973

-Sebastian Nelson
sebn...@gmail.com