Order of Americans of Armorial Ancestry
Member jure John Hoar; member no. 1185
Member jure John Hoar; member no. 1185
The Order of Americans of Armorial Ancestry is a hereditary society that recognizes and honors the descendants of individuals who bore a coat of arms and who settled in what is now the United States prior to 1783. The Order was organized on September 15, 1903, and incorporated in New York State later that year. Founded by Mrs. William Gerry Slade and a group of genealogists and heraldry enthusiasts, the society was established to preserve the memory of early American settlers who were armigerous under the heraldic laws of European sovereigns.
Membership is open to individuals who can demonstrate lineal descent from an ancestor who bore arms granted, recorded, or recognized by an authorized heraldic body, such as the College of Arms in London, the Lord Lyon King of Arms in Edinburgh, or other similar institutions, and who immigrated to colonial America before the close of the Revolutionary War. The Order promotes historical research and education in heraldry and genealogy, helping to illuminate the symbolic legacy of armorial bearings within American family history.
This focus on armigerous ancestry is not symbolic; it helps illuminate the social fabric of the colonial period. Armorial bearings were often associated with land ownership, legal standing, professional rank, or civic responsibility, attributes that many early immigrants brought with them or sought to establish anew in the American colonies. Recognizing these individuals through their coats of arms underscores the complex identities they carried across the Atlantic: as subjects of European crowns, as participants in emerging colonial societies, and as progenitors of American families whose stories are often told through both documentary and visual heritage.
Heraldry, in this sense, is more than ornamental. It is a structured language that offers insight into values, alliances, professions, and aspirations. By documenting and preserving the heraldic claims of early settlers, the Order contributes to a more nuanced understanding of colonial American identity, one that includes not just when and where a person arrived, but what traditions and institutions they represented, and how they expressed continuity with the cultural and legal frameworks of the Old World while adapting to the challenges of the New.
My membership in the Order of Americans of Armorial Ancestry is jure sanguinis through John Hoar of Massachusetts, a 17th-century lawyer, negotiator, and colonial figure of note. The arms attributed to John Hoar are:
Sable, a double-headed eagle displayed within a bordure engrailed Argent. Crest–An eagle’s head erased Sable, gorged with a bar gemelle Or. Motto–In ardua.
These arms, confirmed in multiple American heraldic sources and consistent with colonial-era usage, are striking not only in their symbolism but in their alignment with other prominent Hoare families in the British Isles. The same basic arms, black field, silver double-headed eagle, engrailed silver border, were borne by several noble and armigerous lines of the Hoare name across England and Ireland.
Most notably, these arms were used by the Hoare baronets of Barn Elms, a title created in 1786 for Richard Hoare, a descendant of Sir Richard Hoare (1648–1719), Lord Mayor of London and founder of the private bank C. Hoare & Co. According to Burke’s Peerage, their arms were:
Sable, an eagle displayed with two heads Argent, charged on the breast with an ermine spot, within a bordure engrailed of the second.
The only difference from John Hoar’s version is the ermine spot on the eagle’s breast, which was almost certainly a mark of differencing, rather than a formal augmentation. In English heraldry, it was, and remains, common for junior or collateral branches of a family to use the same core arms with slight modifications to distinguish lineages. The structure and symbolism of the arms remain otherwise identical, signaling a strong connection across branches of the Hoare family.
The same arms as John Hoar also appear in the Hoare baronetcy of Annabella, in the County of Cork. That title, in the Baronetage of Ireland, was created in 1784 for Joseph Hoare, an Irish MP who notably opposed the Act of Union in 1800 at over 90 years old. His descendants likewise bore the same coat, further affirming its use across multiple branches of the Hoare name, spanning both England and Ireland. While direct lineage among these branches has not been conclusively documented, the continuity of arms is unmistakable.
A more elaborated variation appears with the Hoare baronets of Sidestrand Hall, later elevated to the peerage as Viscount Templewood in 1944. Their arms differ, but maintain the same core motif:
Sable, an eagle displayed with two heads between three crosses couped within a bordure indented all Argent.
This version, used by Sir Samuel Hoare, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary in the 20th century, reflects a later heraldic development incorporating cadency and personal distinction. Nonetheless, the double-headed eagle remains central to identity across centuries of political, financial, and colonial activity by families of the same name. While no documentary evidence yet links John Hoar directly to a specific English branch, the heraldic connection is strong. It suggests either a cadet line of the same stock or a collateral relation with enduring rights to the family arms prior to later differencing.
Additional memberships will be added as they are approved.
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