Please help identify my family coat of arms

**anguilla1980** · 27th June 14, 06:40 PM

I have made a new thread on the Heraldry Society of Scotland forums which is a culmination of what I have learned:

http://heraldry-scotland.com/HSSforu...php?f=8&t=3017

I again want to thank everyone here who has been of assistance and gotten me this far! Hopefully with a thread started over there, I can soon fill in even more blanks.

Thanks!

Alex

**anguilla1980** · 27th June 14, 07:24 PM

Well looks like I found one of my answers:

Decreet of forfeiture against the Viscount of Dundee and others
http://www.rps.ac.uk/search.php?acti...ans&id=id21485

It's terribly difficult to read because of the lack of any formatting into paragraphs, etc. but still, now I know and can add that to the family records.

**Joseph McMillan** · 27th June 14, 08:52 PM

Whoa! These are the arms of the Scrymgeour-Wedderburn Earls of Dundee, not Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee. Graham arms wouldn't look anything like this--they would be variations on the stem arms "Or on a chief Sable three escallops Or." The fact that both titles have the same territorial name doesn't mean they have anything to do with each other. With very few exceptions, British peerage titles haven't had anything to do with ownership of the land of that name since the 1500s at the latest.

A biography of Viscount Dundee (no "of") at https://archive.org/details/cu31924028023616, page xv says that he bore the arms "Or three piles wavy within a double tressure flory counterflory and on a chief Sable three escallops Or," and presents evidence to support this contention. This is a recognizably Gordon design.

You may get more definitive information from your query at the HSS forum.

**Joseph McMillan** · 27th June 14, 08:58 PM

Tartans existed in 1689, but not the standardized tartans connected to names that we know today. Those are largely a creation of the 19th century.

**anguilla1980** · 28th June 14, 11:39 AM

Awesome! Thank you for the corrections! I actually found a reproduction of that biography that I'm going to purchase.

Far as Tartan, I know they are a very recent thing, but I did find this:
http://web.ncf.ca/fr307/mary_graham.htm

"James, the 5th Earl and 1st Marquess of Montrose (known to history as the "Great Montrose") was a kinsman of John Graham of Claverhouse and they fought side by side on behalf of their monarch, both dying for their cause. An account of their kinship is given in the family tree."

She suggests "The Tartan of the Grahams of Montrose" would be most appropriate based on that.

Thanks again! So at this point I have no idea why we would have this wooden carving of the Scrymgeour-Wedderburn Earls of Dundee arms in my family along with some Claverhouse stuff. But I'm very glad to have sorted what was evidently a very large misconception in the family.

Alex