A Heraldry "Bucket Shop" Bites the Dust

In an announcement made yesterday, December 19, 2016, the Castle Heraldry Shoppe (I have to admit, I'm a little surprised that they didn't name it "Ye Olde Heraldrie Shoppe." I guess I should be grateful that they didn't) in Fantasyland at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, will be closing on January 12, 2017.

Open since 1994, the place is one of those "bucket shops" where you could look up your surname in the set of books they have there ...

... and if it was listed there, you could find the "history of your surname" and get "your family crest" printed out on all kinds of merchandise and souvenirs from fancy scrolls and armorial plaques to flags and replica swords.

Unfortunately, of course, like all bucket shops, there is never anything to suggest that you yourself have any right at all to the "crest" that they are selling you. The example that I often use when explaining heraldry to genealogists is that I have the surname Warren on both my father's and my mother's side of the family tree. Burke's General Armory (one of the sources used by many of these bucket shop heraldists) has over sixty different coats of arms linked with various Warrens. Which one of these, if any, belong to any of the Warrens in my family tree? There is simply no way of knowing without doing the genealogical research. And the one "family crest" that these shops are likely to sell me is very unlikely to be one actually used in my family.

So all in all I really can't say that I'm sorry that this shop is going to be closing soon. It's possible that over the years they sparked some interest in heraldry, but that little bit of good is not, to my mind, outweighed by the greater numbers of people who believed that what they were being sold was somehow related to their family line.

You can read some more about this story and see some more pictures of the "shoppe" on the website of The Orange County Register at http://www.ocregister.com/articles/shop-738876-castle-family.html

Tracking Down a Coat of Arms ...

... and finding a bucket shop.

A recent correspondent enlisted my aid in trying to track down the origin of a coat of arms in an old family history book, The Crum Family in America, following a line of the family descended from a pair of brothers who emigrated from what is now Germany to Virginia in 1741.

The book illustrated the following coat of arms as belonging to the family.

My correspondent noted some unusual features in the arms, and asked my assistance in understanding the arms and trying to determine their origin.  The features which struck him as unusual were the arms of the cross ending in eagle's heads, which he had not seen anywhere else; the fact that the helm was facing forward rather than to dexter or sinister; and the armored boot as the crest.

After doing some research in some of the general and German armorials here, I responded as follows:

The cross terminating in eagle's heads is something that I've not found, either, though it is reminiscent of a "cross gringoly," a cross with each arm ending in two serpent's heads.  But even the cross gringoly is found but rarely; this variant is thus even more rare.

The barred helm being face on is actually not all that rare in German heraldry, though even there facing slightly to dexter or to sinister is more common.  Still, in my copy of Siebmacher's Wappenbuch von 1605, on the pages where each row of arms contains five shields, the helm atop the center shield in each row faces forward, while the two on the left and two on the right face in toward the center.  So it's not entirely unexpected in German heraldry to have a single shield with the helm facing forward.

The crest is unusual, in that for a boot (even an armored boot) you would normally expect it to be right side up, or "sole down".  I have seen crests of entire legs (armored and unarmored) which are upside-down (or "foot up"), but for a boot or a lower leg only, this position is very unusual.

With all that as introduction, what I suspect happened is that the author of the book found some what we call "bucket shop heraldist," someone who looks up someone's "family coat of arms" (or worse, "family crest") in their database and just spits one out, whether or not their customer is related to the original bearer of the arms or not and, if not finding an exact match in the database, grabs one from a similar surname - sometimes with modifications, sometimes without - and offers that up as the "family coat of arms" of X family.

This is not a new phenomenon; I have seen where one such heraldist in early 18th Century Boston gave his customer, surnamed Scolly, the arms of a family named Scholar.

What I think happened here is that, not finding a coat of arms for Crum, someone modified the arms and crest of a family named Crümmel de Roiff of Westphalia (listed in Rietstap's Armorial Général), whose arms are blazoned Argent a cross gringoly gules, and whose crest is A boot gules, spurred argent.  [Below is a .jpg of Crümmel de Roiff's arms taken from Rolland and Rolland's Illustrations to the Armorial Général.]  They then changed the serpent's heads to eagle's heads on the cross (or they didn't know that they were supposed to be serpent's heads, and drew them as eagle's heads), and (probably lacking an illustration) placed the boot upside down for the crest.  Presto!  The arms of Crum from Germany.  Happy customer; paid heraldist.  Win-win for everyone.  Except, of course, for those who come later and are trying to figure out where the arms came from.

So, what do you think?  Did I miss a Crum coat of arms with a cross terminating in eagle's heads, or are we dealing with another example of the bucket shop herald's work?

I know what I think.

"Your Family Coat of Arms"

Last April, Barry Canote over on his blog Missouri and Things posted a discussion about heraldry and coats of arms, and in particular, about something I have railed about myself a number of times on this blog: bucket shop heraldry, those folks who try to sell you "your family coat of arms," or even worse, "your family crest."

You can find Barry's post on-line at http://missouriandthings.blogspot.com/2014/04/beware-of-companies-selling-you-family.html

It's a nice concise post, well thought out, and expressive of his own experiences with heraldry in his family.  I recommend it to you as worth reading.

For my own part, it's nice to know that I'm not all by myself in being "a voice crying in the wilderness" about bucket shop heralds.

Oh, My!

 Just in time for Christmas!  The Gallo Family Vineyards of offering their free on-line "Crest Creator."  Now you, too, can go to their website and create - to download or to share - a "family crest" for your family.

Using a wide selection of shield shapes and backgrounds, charges of various types, and so on, you can design a "crest" for your own family,  complete with a motto (the limit on the template I selected is ten letters, including spaces and punctuation, hence the lack of an exclamation mark at the end) like the one I did here.

Pretty awful, huh?  (The flamingos are a long-running bit between my late father and a friend of his.  I just couldn't resist using them as supporters when the opportunity reared its ugly pink head.)

Still and all, it can be a fun little game to play around with.  And it's free.  And best of all, it's not really heraldry.

Feel free to drop by and spend a few moments taking this hobby a little less seriously than usual.  You can find the Gallo Family Vineyards' "Crest Creator" on-line at http://www.crestcreator.com/lobby/

“Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!”

Oh, dear.  As if there aren’t enough others out there already, I recently ran across a press announcement that the website Irish Blessings now has “a new search utility for looking up an Irish coat of arms, making it easier than ever to find a coat of arms to match a specific Irish surname.”  Plus, after you’ve found “the” coat of arms for your Irish surname, they’ve got just the stuff bearing that coat of arms that they can sell you!

Never mind that there may be more than one, sometimes many more than one, coat of arms borne by individuals with that surname.  Never mind that just because you have that same surname, that alone does not give you any legitimate right to bear that particular piece of heraldry.  Never mind that they call a coat of arms a “crest” indiscriminately.

But I have to draw the line somewhere, and here it is: “Once part of a warrior's defensive armor, the Family Coat of Arms Shield Plaque is now a historical monument for your wall, emblazoned with your Irish family's coat of arms and family name. The walnut stained wood plaque and brass plate with the Irish family crest is confirmed by over a decade of research by heraldry experts.”  Really??  “Over a decade of research by heraldry experts”?  All the "research" and expertise it takes is to pay about US$2,500 to buy a database of arms that will let you type in a surname and print out a picture of the coat of arms associated (in the database) with that surname.

I say it’s a bucket shop,* and I say the hell with it.  (And no, I’m not going to put a link to their website on this blog.)


* “An heraldic bucket shop is a heraldry company that will ‘sell’ a coat of arms associated with the customer's surname, regardless of whether the customer can actually claim a relation to the original armiger.”  (Wikipedia, cf. “Bucket Shop (heraldry)”).