A Search for the Arms of the Dana Family
by Rafe de Crespigny
May 2014
Introduction:
The
Dana family is noted in American history, and has members and kinfolk around the world. The coat of arms, however, potentially an insignia of identity and relationship, has been a source of confusion; enhanced by contradictory and essentially spurious accounts of the family origin.
Burke's
Encyclopaedia of Heraldry lists the armigerous families of Britain in alphabetical order, but this comprehensive work contains no mention of any family of the Dana surname.
1
Bolton's American Armory, however, offers four different forms of arms:
2
- One, ascribed to Richard Dana (1700-1772) and based on the frame of his portrait, has a silver shield with a blue chevron engrailed [see below] between three "stags:" these last, however, will be discussed further. The crest is a fox and the motto Cavendo tutus.
- The second, based on the bookplate of Richard's son Francis Dana (1743-1811), is described with a red chevron rather than a blue one, again with the crest of a fox and the motto Cavendo tutus.3
A note adds that Francis' son Richard Henry Dana Senior (1787-1879) had a gold shield, and unicorns instead of stags.
- A third, based on the bookplate of Charles L Dana, has "On a bend [see below] three chevrons [or chevronels];" no colours are specified. The crest is described as an ox's head cabossed (facing the viewer); no motto is given. There were several men named Charles Dana with the middle initial L, but this one is probably Charles Loomis Dana (1852-1935), a noted physician.
- And the fourth, from the bookplate of Charles A Dana, has a shield divided horizontally into six bars, with three lions rampant [see below] wearing crowns; again, no colours are specified. Here too the crest is an ox's head, and there is no motto.
Again, there have been many Charles Danas with the middle initial A, but this one is probably Charles Anderson Dana (1881-1975), lawyer, businessman and philanthropist; another Charles Anderson Dana (1819-1897) was a well-known journalist associated with General Ulysses S Grant during the American Civil War, but the lawyer appears more likely to have used a coat of arms.
All these variants are discussed further below, and I argue that
Bolton's is incorrect in a number of details, but the two used by Richard and his son Francis are the earliest recorded and appear the most significant.
A number of different designs, each purporting to be the arms of the Dana family, may also be found on internet websites:
- "Arms and Badges" at http://www.armsandbadges.com/browse.aspx?List=3f80a37c-4a73-4b95-bd3c-e7a36871d7a4; accessed May 2014. This shows a white/silver shield with a red chevron and three stags, similar to Bolton's description of that used by Francis Dana above. There is an eagle's head above the shield, looking like a crest, but Arms and Badges applies the eagle's head to all its presentations; it is not specific to any family.
- "Heraldry WS" at http://www.heraldry.ws/html/dana.html; accessed May 2014. This is the shield which Bolton's ascribes to Charles L Dana above, with the colours shown as a black shield, a white bend and green chevrons.
- "House of Names," which is associated with "The Red Thread," presents two versions at http://the-red-thread.net/genealogy/dana.html; accessed May 2014.
- An "English" version has a gold shield, with a red-and-white checked chevron between three silver trefoils – similar to shamrocks, as below; this is heraldically incorrect, for silver should not be placed upon gold.
- An "Italian" version has vertical bars of gold and blue.
- "4crests" at http://www.4crests.com/dana-coat-of-arms.html; accessed May 2014. This design is similar to the English version of House of Names, but the trefoils are green, which is heraldically acceptable.
Outline sketches of the various charges mentioned above are provided here:
Just as the heraldry is confused, so too accounts of the origins of the surname on the websites
are varied, vague and unreliable. There are prosaic explanations, including the obvious one
that it referred to a Dane or – in contrast – from House of Names, that it is an Anglo-Saxon
name, taken from the word
dann, meaning "valley," an early site of settlement. House of
Names also finds an Italian origin in Piedmont, implying some connection to the royal house
of Savoy, future kings of Italy. Another suggestion cites the personal name Daniel while,
still further afield, The Red Thread offers a theory that the Danas may be connected to Dan,
one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. 4crests even refers to the mythical princess Danae, who was
imprisoned in a tower by her father but was seduced by the Greek god Zeus, manifested as a
shower of gold, and gave birth to the hero Perseus. It's good fun, but it's not useful.
4
In fact, the origins of the Dana family are quite obscure, and their heraldry is erratic.
By the use of library resources, however, including material which has been placed on the
internet, and various items of physical evidence, it is possible to trace some history and to
recreate the earliest coat of arms.
The family in Massachusetts:
There are two very useful books on the history of the family:
The Dana Saga: three centuries
of the Dana family, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana (1881-1950), published by The
Cambridge Historical Society in 1941,
5
and
The Dana Family in America, by Elizabeth
Ellery Dana (1846-1939), published at Cambridge in 1956.
6
The Dana Family is a work of almost seven hundred pages; it was begun by Elizabeth Ellery, continued after her death by
her nephew Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, and was finally edited and published by
members of the family forming the Dana Genealogical Committee; it contains a most detailed
genealogy up to the middle of the twentieth century. In contrast,
The Dana Saga has fewer
than seventy pages, and was evidently prepared as a preliminary pamphlet while Henry Dana
was working on the materials left by his aunt. Besides these, a
Memoranda of Some of the
Descendants of Richard Dana, compiled by John Jay Dana (1811-1899), was published at
Boston in 1865;
7
and the
Personal Papers of Elizabeth Dana have been published by the
National Parks Service in 2001.
8
In her Introduction to
The Dana Family, Elizabeth Ellery Dana discusses the possible
origins of the family, and concludes that the only likely connection is with Manchester
in England, where a Richard Dana was baptised on 31 October 1617. His name is not
mentioned again in English records, and it is probable this is the same person as first appears
at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the early 1640s. Elizabeth Ellery notes that she has explored
the possibility of a French origin, including any connection to the Huguenot exile community
in England, but can find no references; and she dismisses the theory of migration from Italy.
Amongst other arguments against a non-English origin, Richard Dana held substantial official
positions in Massachusetts, and it is most unlikely that a foreigner would have received such
appointments in a British colony.
The Dana Family notes also that Richard Dana was the
only person of that surname to come to America for the next two hundred years, and he is the
sole ancestor of the main family.
About 1647 Richard Dana was awarded a land grant on the southern bank of the Charles
River. He continued to acquire property, he was an early donor to Harvard College, and he
held several important local offices. He died of a fall in 1690.
Richard Dana's youngest son Daniel (1664-1749) had a successful life without great
distinction, but his son Richard (1700-1772), first of the family to attend Harvard, became a
magistrate and a leading figure in agitation against the British imperial government. Dressed
in full legal regalia, his portrait was painted in 1765 by the celebrated artist John Singleton
Copley.
9
Richard's son Francis (1743-1811) had a still more impressive career, on a national
scale. A leading lawyer and a close associate of George Washington, he was a member of
the Constitutional Congresses of 1777, signed the Articles of Confederation in 1778, and
was sent as Ambassador to Russia in 1780; the future President John Adams served as his
secretary. Again a member of Congress in 1784 and a leader of the Federalist Party, he later
joined the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and was Chief Justice from 1791 to 1806. His
son and grandson, Richard Henry Sr and Jr, were both lawyers; Richard Henry Sr (1787-
1879) being also a well-known poet and literary critic, while Richard Henry Jr (1815-1882)
was the author of
Two Years Before the Mast.
The English coat of arms:
Francis Dana was the third son of Richard: the eldest, Edmund, was born in 1739; a second
son, Henry, was born in 1741 but died in 1761. Edmund had graduated from Harvard in 1759,
and he left America for England about 1760; it does not appear that he ever returned.
Edmund took holy orders in the Church of England, spent time in London, and then held
a series of livings, ending as Vicar of Wroxeter in Shropshire. It was not a notable career, in
no way comparable to that of his brother Francis, but he did become well connected: in 1765
he married Helen, daughter of Charles the sixth Baron Kinnaird; her mother Barbara was a
daughter of the baronet Sir James Johnstone.
10
It was probably through Edmund's agency that
the Dana family first acquired a coat of arms, though it came by a most roundabout route and
is of very uncertain authority.
In 1569, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, the Alderman William Dane of London
became Sheriff of that city and was granted a coat of arms by the English College of Heralds.
Originally from Stortford in Hertfordshire, he became a member of the Worshipful Company
of Ironmongers and was Master of the Company in 1570 and in 1573, in which year he died.
A monument set up by his fellow guildsmen describes the shield: "
Or, a chevron engrailed
azure, between three hinds
gules;" in modern English, that is a golden/yellow shield, with a blue chevron with scalloped edges, surrounded by three female deer coloured red.
11
The effect is gaudy, but Tudor heraldry could look like that:
There is some resemblance to the shield of the Ironmongers Company, which I show
alongside. It has a silver shield with a chevron surrounded by three objects, in that case they
are described as "gads" (wedge-shaped bars) of steel; the chevron, moreover, has three golden
swivels, ironwork designed to assist a chain to flow freely; the supporters are lizards but
surely represent salamanders, which operate in extreme heat.
12
So William Dane adapted the shield of his Company but created several points of
difference, reversing the colours and even varying the edge of the chevron. It is important to
note, however, that the animals on his shield were hinds – female deer – and not stags. The
badge of Sir Christopher Hatton (1540-1591), future Lord Chancellor and already a favourite
of Queen Elizabeth, was a hind, and it is probable that William Dane was showing respect
to a current or potential patron. In similar fashion, when Sir Francis Drake sailed around the
world from 1577 to 1580 he named his ship
Golden Hind.
William Dane was survived by his wife Margaret nee Kempe, but the couple had only
one son, who died young, probably before his father, so there was no-one to inherit the coat
of arms.
There is no reason to believe there was any family connection between William Dane of
Hertfordshire and London and the Dana family, probably from Manchester, two hundred
years later; not even the name is the same, and it is unlikely that the final e was ever sounded.
For some reason or other, however, members of the Dana family in the latter eighteenth
century persuaded themselves that the shield of William Dane could reasonably be used for
their own insignia.
13
The person responsible for the appropriation was most probably the Reverend Edmund
Dana. There is no way to tell how he found out about the grant of arms in 1569, but after his
arrival in England in the early 1760s he would have had opportunity to make enquiries, and
he may have simply asked at the College of Heralds when he was in London.
One particular reason for Edmund Dana to seek a form of arms would be his marriage to
Helen Kinnaird in 1765. Regardless of personal affection, as the daughter of a lord she and
her family could expect her to marry a gentleman of coat armour, and Edmund might well
have found it desirable to acquire such insignia; since we are told that the couple were wed at
Leith in Scotland, where heraldry is governed by Lord Lyon King at Arms independent of the
English establishment, there were probably no questions asked.
This being done – and we know that Edmund Dana's family in England used a version
of the shield of William Dane
14
– it is not difficult to accept that he advised his father and
his brother Francis of the newly-claimed arms. Their use was never registered by the English
College of Heralds and so was formally unlawful in that country, and few American colonists
had been granted arms. Edmund Dana was evidently not concerned, however, and his father
Richard and brother Francis were certainly not deterred; they appear to have been making use
of the insignia by the mid-1760s.
The arms in America: Richard Dana's portrait frame and Francis Dana's bookplate:
We have noted that Richard Dana had his portrait painted by John Singleton Copley in 1765.
The portrait survives and is presented within a gilded frame, probably of the same date or
very close to it, which has at the top a shield and a crest. The picture and frame are privately
owned by a member of the family, but it was lent for an exhibition at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York during 1992, and a descriptive catalogue was published as
American Rococo, 1750-1775: Elegance in Ornament.
15
Unfortunately, though there is a
large photograph of the portrait and its ornate frame, the design at the top does not come
out well and cannot be reproduced here. The charges can nonetheless be identified as a
blue chevron and three animals, and the crest is a walking fox. In contradiction to the entry
in
Bolton's Armory, however, it is clear that the background of the shield is gold. It is not
possible to ascertain whether there is a motto.
About the same time Richard Dana's son Francis had a bookplate prepared, also showing
a coat of arms. The work was engraved by the distinguished silversmith Nathaniel Hurd, and
a copy appears facing page 30 of
The Dana Saga. This contains the full achievement, and
the illustration has a commentary by the author Henry Dana, including a blazon [description]
of the whole achievement: "Argent, a chevron engrailed azure, between three stags trippant
gules." The crest is a fox, and the motto is
Cavendo tutus: Safe [
tutus] by being cautious
[
cavendo].
Henry Dana adds that "This was the Coat-of-Arms granted in 1569 to John Dana [
sic, not
William Dane], from whom Francis Dana at one time imagined he was descended."
In fact, despite Henry Dana's kindly note, there is no reason to believe that Francis Dana was
under any illusions about the descent, and there are a number of problems and doubts about
the description of the shield:
Firstly, though engraved metal can have no direct colouring, colour can be indicated by a
system of "hatching:" whereas
argent or silver is plain, dots are used to show
or, the heraldic
term for gold, Downward lines indicate
gules red, sideways show
azure blue, and the lines
for
vert green are diagonal from top left to bottom right. In the illustration, therefore, dots are
discernable on the background of the shield, and so it should in fact be described as
or gold,
not as
argent silver; that is the way William Dana had it in 1569.
Second, while the chevron is indeed engrailed, the hatching is unclear. It is possible that
the chevron is red rather than blue, a variation from William Dana's, but more probable that
Francis followed the some blue colour scheme as on the frame of his father's portraits.
Thirdly, however, though the blazon given by Henry Dana describes the animals as stags,
they do not appear to have horns, and are more likely to be the original hinds of William
Dana. In that regard, the design proposed by Arms and Badges above, with deer surrounding
a red chevron, is comparatively close, but the animals are female without horns, not stags
with antlers, and the background of the shield is gold and not silver.
Bolton's American Armory, as discussed in the
Introduction, says that Francis Dana's
son Richard Henry Sr had a bookplate with a gold shield but with unicorns instead of deer. I
suspect this is a misreading of the design, and that in fact the animals were correctly hinds.
We may note also that, writing in the 1860s, J J Dana states at
page 6 of his Memoranda
that "The first known proofs of [the shield's use are soon after the Revolutionary War." The
evidence of Richard Dana's portrait frame and the bookplate of Francis Dana would indicate
that he is mistaken.
In general, while shields are supposed to be more or less permanently attached to a particular
family, subject to slight variations to identify individuals or cadet branches, crests can be
changed more readily and mottos can be adopted almost at will. Most families, however,
maintain the same tradition from one generation to the next.
The motto adopted by Richard and Francis is shared with other families, sometimes
accompanied by the crest or charge of a snake, though it is also used by the Dukes of
Devonshire, whose surname is Cavendish which goes quite well with
cavendo. For the
Danas, though the crest of the fox has no earlier authority, it makes a nice combination with
the motto: female deer should be careful when there are foxes about.
The Dana arms in England and Australia: Charlotte Frances Dana's box:
When I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during September 1999, my aunt Nancy Movius
nee Champion de Crespigny showed me a small camphorwood box with a silver plaque
engraved with a shield and a motto. The box is a family heirloom which has since been
passed to Nancy Movius' grand-daughter, but at that time its provenance was not known, and
she asked me to try to find out what the shield related to and where the box might have come
from. I was able to offer her some conclusions, which I have now been able to confirm.
The shield and motto on the plaque are accompanied by neither crest nor supporters,
while the smaller figures on the shield are difficult to make out and their colours cannot be
identified. In heraldic terms, however, the shield would be blazoned:
Per pale:
dexter: quarterly, 1 and 4, vert an eagle displayed; 2 and 3, argent a lion rampant;
sinister: or, a chevron engrailed gules between three hinds.
Translated from the formal language, we have a shield divided in two down the middle. The
left-hand part of the shield is again divided into four parts, of which both the top left and
bottom right have a green background with a spread-winged eagle; while the top right and bottom left
have a white or silver background with a lion rampant.
The motto below the shield is in English: "In God Alone I Trust."
From the discussion above, we know that the right-hand half is a version of the Dana
shield, based upon that of William Dane, but with one significant difference both from
William Dane's shield and from that used by Richard and Francis Dana in America: whereas
the background is
or gold, and the three animals are female deer, the chevron is engraved
with vertical hatching, indicating
gules red. It appears that Edmund Dana in England varied
William Dane's shield, but his father and his brother preferred to keep the original colours.
The left-hand half of the shield is not difficult to identify. There are several books which
index the charges on shields and the family or organisation which holds them, and one of the
most comprehensive is
Papworth's Ordinary of British Armorials, compiled in the nineteenth
century and revised in the mid-twentieth.
16
This work ascribes the arms of an eagle on a
green ground quartered with a lion rampant on a silver ground to Sherborne "of the Tower
of London." Papworth, moreover, describes the lions as
vert green and the eagles as
argent
white/silver, so each quarter reverses the colours of its neighbour.
17
The reference to the Tower is unusual: most families are described as coming from a
particular county and not from a building, even a royal one. Shaw's
Knights of England,
however, records that Edward Sherburne, clerk of Ordnance at the Tower, was created
a knight bachelor in January 1682 (the beginning of 1683 by modern calculation – New Year at that time was in March).
18
These are presumably the arms that he bore and that his descendants continued to hold, though they may have had no further connection to the Tower.
This shield, moreover, is close to that recorded for the Sherborne family of Lancashire,
the main difference being that the (original?) Lancashire branch has the quarters in opposite
order, so the lion is in the first and fourth, and the eagle in the second and third. Burke's
Encyclopedia of Heraldry also lists the two families, but adds that the crest of the Lancashire
family is a unicorn head, silver, with a horn of gold, while Sherborne of the Tower of London
has a green lion rampant guardant [i.e. looking towards the viewer].
19
A shield divided into two relates to a married man whose wife has brothers. When a woman
marries, her husband is entitled to "impale" the arms of his father-in-law. If, however, the
wife has no brothers, she is a "heraldic heiress:" her husband places her family arms on a
small shield in the middle of his own, and their descendants can show the combined arms
as "quarterings" thereafter.
On such a shield, the arms on the left hand side are those of the husband's family and
those on the right the wife's. [Left and right in this case are described as from the observer's
point of view, but in heraldry they are considered from that of the wearer: hence
dexter
[Latin: right] is on the observer's left, but is a position of greater honour than
sinister [left]
which is on the observer's right.]
So the small shield engraved on the box relates to a married couple, the husband being a
man of the Sherborne surname and the wife being born Dana. Fortunately it is comparatively
easy to identify them.
The genealogy in
The Dana Family lists the children of the Reverend Edmund Dana.
20
The first three were daughters: Frances Johnstone, who was born on 8 May 1766 and died on
7 May 1767; Elizabeth Caroline (1767-1844) who had many children; and Frances Johnstone,
born on 3 September 1768 and named after her dead sister – a common custom of the time.
21
In 1793 this second Frances Johnstone Dana married Joseph Sherburne [or Sherborne], and
the union was symbolised by the shield which combined their families' arms.
I have in my possession a family Bible, which came to me from my grandfather Constantine
Trent Champion de Crespigny. An inscription in the front describes how it was passed to
him by the will of his grandmother Charlotte Frances Champion Crespigny nee Dana (1820-
1904). The inscription before that reads:
The Gift of Mrs Frances Johnstone Sherborne to her niece and God daughter Charlotte
Frances Dana by her will –
Charlotte Frances Champion Crespigny nee Dana was eighth child of William Pulteney Dana
(1776-1861), who was born at Wroxeter as the seventh child and second son of the Reverend
Edmund Dana. Frances Johnstone Sherborne nee Dana, William Pulteney's elder sister, was
the aunt of Charlotte Frances and also her godmother.
In order for the box to come into the possession of my aunt Nancy Movius, daughter
of Constantine Trent Champion de Crespigny, it must have been owned by her great-
grandmother Charlotte Frances nee Dana, who came to Australia with her husband Philip
Robert Champion Crespigny in 1852. Like the Bible, it was presumably a gift, and the date
when it was given may be indicated by the motto on the plaque: "In God Alone I Trust." The
motto is not associated with either the Sherborne or the Dana families,
22
but it would be most
suitable for a present from a godmother, and I believe the box may have been given to the
infant Charlotte Frances at the time of her christening in 1820.
In any event, the box and its plaque demonstrate that the Dana family in England used
the shield with a red chevron between three hinds on a gold background. Two of Charlotte
Frances' brothers, Henry Edmund Pulteney Dana (1817-1852) and William Augustus Dana
(1826-1866), also came to Australia: Henry became the founder and head of the Native
Police Corps – armed Aborigines mounted on horses – and William was second in command;
there are still members of the family in Australia.
23
So the shield of the Dana family in England and Australia, descended from the Reverend
Edmund, was gold with a red chevron and three red hinds, while the family in America,
descended from Edmund's father Richard and his younger brother Francis, followed the
original sixteenth-century pattern borne by William Dane, with a blue chevron. It is probable
that both sides of the family used the crest of a fox and the motto
Cavendo tutus.
In footnote 57 on page 29 of
The Dana Saga, Henry Dana remarks that Elizabeth Ellery Dana
disapproved of any claim to heraldic honours: "the Dana family, with their humble origin,
had no right to bear this Coat-of-Arms." Henry supports her opinion, and particularly objects
to the fox crest and to the motto: "The Danas were rarely safe and never cautious." Richard,
Francis and their kinfolk, however, were and are entitled to disagree.
The other Dana arms:
We have noted in the
Introduction above that
Bolton's American Armory lists two other sets
of arms used by members of the Dana family, both based on bookplates:
Charles L[oomis] Dana had a shield with a bend bearing three chevrons; no colours
are given, but the footnote to page 29 of
The Dana Saga describes the shield as black, with
a white bend and three green chevrons: this is the same as that presented by the website of
Heraldry WS.
Charles A[nderson] Dana had a shield divided horizontally with six bars, with three
lions rampant wearing crowns, but there is no source for any of the colours; presumably the
bookplate did not provide any hatchings. I have provided random colouring in order to show
the nature of the background and the charges.
Bolton's American Armory has the crest as an ox's head
cabossed (facing the viewer); it
is described by Washbourne as a bull's head
affrontée, which is the same design. Again, no
colour is given, and there is no reference to a motto.
24
In his footnote to page 29 of
The Dana Saga, following his unfavourable view of the arms
claimed by Richard and Francis Dana, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana remarks that the
black shield with a white bend and three green chevrons, accompanied by the crest of a bull's
head crest "is, if possible, even more spurious." He makes no comment about the shield with
bars and three crowned lions rampant, but would no doubt have been even more scathing.
His strictures, however, are not entirely justified. It is clear from Bolton's American
Armory that the two achievements were used, and by different branches of the family:
- While Richard Dana (1700-1772) and Francis were the son and grandson of Daniel
(1664-1749), who was the seventh and youngest son of Richard (1617-1690), founder of
the family in America;
- Charles Loomis Dana was descended from Caleb (1697-1769), also a son of Daniel but
elder brother of the second Richard;
- and Charles Anderson Dana was descended from Benjamin (1659/60-1738), sixth son of
the first Richard.
By the early twentieth century, therefore, when Charles Loomis Dana (1852-1935) and
Charles Anderson Dana (1881-1975) were making use of their bookplates, the connection
was very distant. Strictly speaking, they should perhaps have used some variant of the earlier
coat of arms, but given the distance of the relationship and the lapse of time it was reasonable
for them to have chosen insignia of their own, and their descendants are free to follow their
models.
Finally, we may note once more that while
Bolton's American Armory lists shields and
arms for the Dana family, neither Papworth's
Ordinary nor Burke's
Encyclopaedia record any
of the forms. Those latter compilations deal only with the heraldry of Britain, where the
lineage of William Dane was long extinct; though members of the Dana family made use of
his chevron and hinds in England and elsewhere, they never sought to register them.
Conclusion:
There are three sets of arms which can be ascribed to one branch or another of the Dana
family. Those connected to Charles Anderson Dana, in the line of Benjamin the sixth son of
the found Richard Dana, may like to use the shield with six bars and three crowned lions –
and may presumably choose whichever combination of colours seems appropriate.
For those related to Charles Loomis Dana, descended from Caleb son of Daniel and
grandson of the first Richard, there is his black shield with a white bend and three green
chevrons.
And those of the second Richard's lineage can claim the tradition of a chevron on a
gold shield, with three red hinds or does; the colour of the chevron may vary between blue,
for members of the family in the United States, to red for those of English or Australian
background.
So there is a broad choice, and individuals may vary colours and shapes to distinguish themselves from their cousins. One notable point, however, is that of the designs found on internet websites, only that shown by Heraldry WS has actually been used by a noted member of the family. The version provided by Arms and Badges has some relation to the initial accession by Richard, Edmund and Francis Dana, taken from the shield of William Dane, but is mistaken as to colour and has stags rather than hinds. All others must be regarded as fictitious and without authority.
..........
Notes:
1. John Burke and John Bernard Burke, Encyclopaedia of Heraldry or General Armory of England, Scotland and Ireland, comprising a registry of all armorial bearings from the earliest to the present time, including the late grants by the College of Arms, London 1844. ↩
2. Charles Knowles Bolton, Bolton's American Armory: a record of coats of arms which have been of use
within the present bounds of the United States, first published Boston 1927 with later editions; most recently
revised by Jina Bolton, The Genealogical Publishing Company, 2009, and available on the internet at http://books.google.com.au/books?id=YH5LJSlAsoUC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q= Dana &f=false;
accessed May 2014. The Dana arms are described on page 45. ↩
3. The colours of the shield and of the chevron are discussed further below. ↩
4. The suggested origins are discussed in similar terms in a footnote at page 2 of The Dana Saga as below. ↩
5. At http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89062874821;view=1up;seq=11; accessed May 2014. Both The
Dana Saga and The Dana Family in America, below, have been scanned from a copy held by the University of
Wisconsin. ↩
6. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89062875265;view=1up;seq=7; accessed May 2014. ↩
7. E.g. https://archive.org/stream/memorandaofsomeo1865dana/memorandaofsomeo1865dana_djvu.txt;
accessed May 2014. ↩
8. http://www.nps.gov/long/historyculture/upload/EED%20Finding%20Aid.pdf; accessed May 2014. ↩
9. The picture – and notably its frame – are discussed further below. ↩
10. Details of the marriage and immediate descent of Edmund Dana appear as Genealogy item 581 at pages 484
to 486 of The Dana Family in America. Edmund and Helen's first three children, all daughters, were born in
London between 1766 and 1768: see below.
Page 20 of The Dana Saga tells how in April 1775, just before the outbreak of fighting at Concord and
Lexington, Francis Dana was sent as an envoy to England with letters to Benjamin Franklin. In fact Franklin
returned to America early in May of that year; their ships probably passed one another in mid-Atlantic. It is also
said that while he was in England, Francis sought to persuade his brother's connections to sympathy with the
colonists' cause; we are not told whether he had any notable effect. ↩
11. See http://www.forgottenbooks.org/readbook_text/Some_ Account_ of_ the_ Worshipful_ Company_ of_ Ironmongers_1000832814/561; accessed May 2014. ↩
12. John Bromley and Heather Child, The Armorial Bearings of the Guilds of London, London 1960, 148-151,
with plate facing 134. ↩
13. At pages 6 and 7 of his Memoranda, J J Dana expresses his doubts on the connection to William Dane, and
confirms that there is no evidence the name Dana has any connection that that of Dane, and that it has always
been a word of two syllables. ↩
14. On the use of arms by Edmund Dana's family, see the account of the camphorwood box below. ↩
15. Morrison H. Heckscher, American Rococo, 1750-1775: Elegance in Ornament, New York 1992; accessed
May 2014 at http://books.google.com.au/books?id=0Iqxqguoy BkC&print sec = frontcover&redir_esc= y#v =onepage&q&f=false. The portrait and its frame are illustrated at page 141, with discussion at 142. ↩
16. John Woody Papworth, An Alphabetical Dictionary of Coats of Arms belonging to Families in Great Britain
and Ireland: forming an extensive ordinary of British armorials; edited from page 696 by Alfred W. Morant;
reprinted from the original 1874 edition with introductions by G D Squibb and A R Wagner, Baltimore:
Genealogical Publishing Company, Baltimore 1965. ↩
17. Papworth, page 304.
The surname appears in different texts as Sherborne, Sherburne and Sherbourne. There is no doubt,
however, that it is the same family. ↩
18. William A Shaw, The Knights of England: a complete record from the earliest time to the present day of the
knights of all the orders of chivalry in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and of knights bachelors; incorporating
a complete list of knights bachelors dubbed in Ireland, compiled by G. D. Burtchaell, London 1906, volume II,
page 258. ↩
19. John Burke and John Bernard Burke, Encyclopaedia of Heraldry, London 1844. ↩
20. The Dana Family, page 485. ↩
21. Johnstone was the maiden name of Helen nee Kinnaird's mother, the child's grandmother. ↩
22. See, for example, Henry Washbourne, The Book of Family Crests, London 1882, which includes "A Dictionary of Mottos." ↩
23. There is an entry for Henry Edward Pulteney Dana compiled by Marilynn I. Norman in The Australian Dictionary of Biography, Canberra 1966: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/dana-henry-edward-pulteney-1952/text2327; accessed May 2014. The year of his birth is given as 1820, but The Dana Family has 1817, which
would be correct: Charlotte Frances was born in March 1820, and she was not Henry's twin.
Further details are provided by Marie Hansen Fels, Good Men and True: the Aboriginal police of the Port
Phillip district 1837-1853, Melbourne University Press 1988; pages 44-49 discuss the family background. ↩
24. Washbourne, Family Crests, volume I, page 131. ↩
25. This is the shield presented by Heraldry WS; the present design is taken from that website at http://www.heraldry.ws/html/dana.html; accessed May 2014. ↩
