Approved arms for the Tennessee Valley Scottish Society.

[Joseph McMillan]

Nice work, Harold. You say approved arms? Approved by who? Only yourselves? If this is so, do you have sufficient funds available to be able to get them officially approved?

In the United States, as in most countries, there is no more "official" way of obtaining arms than to adopt them unilaterally, whether by an individual or a corporate body. Many people are under the misapprehension that having them granted/registered/matriculated/certified by a foreign heraldic authority somehow makes them more authoritative, but this is not the case. When a heraldic authority grants arms, he is conferring a property right in those arms; Lyon King of Arms (for example) has no more power to confer such a right within the United States than the Land Registers of Scotland do to issue a certificate of title to land in the United States.

(Lord Lyon can and does, of course, grant arms to Americans, but the legal or official effect of the grant exists only within Scotland. In other words, arms granted by Lord Lyon are official within Scotland, but in the USA are just as official--or unofficial--as arms assumed unilaterally.)

... that arms are not delivered to families or clans but soley to individuals.

This is oft-repeated but not true. In the first place, the rules vary from country to country, but even in the places where this is the closest to being true, it is still not completely true. In England, personal arms are typically granted to a single individual "to be used by the said [name] and his descendants ... according to the law of arms." The English law of arms provides for the same arms to be inherited by all legitimate descendants in the male line. It was once customary to use the minor marks of cadency to distinguish among the various sons inheriting the arms, but recent and present English kings of arms have acknowledged that this was never compulsory. The immediate predecessor of the present Garter King of Arms went so far as to discourage their use under most circumstances. So if we define a family as consisting of the descendants of a common ancestor, English arms are family arms. In fact, there are many official English heraldic documents referring to the "arms of the family of XXXX." This does not mean that they belong to everyone with the same surname, which is what people usually mean when they say there's no such thing as family arms, but that's really a sloppy way of putting it.

In Scotland, Lord Lyon enforces differencing on the part of younger sons, but even so I think it makes sense to speak of "family arms." In fact, the whole Scottish system of heraldic design is built on the notion that each member of an armigerous family--and even of each surname!--shares the same basic coat of arms, to which more or less minor differences are applied for the arms of junior members of the extended family. That's why the person entitled to use the arms in their most basic form is called the "chief of the name and arms of MacX."

How come a family or a clan cannot get arms, but a Scottish society can?

In addition to "natural persons," arms are also granted to or assumed by what are known in civil law as "juridical persons" or "artificial persons," such as corporations, associations, cooperatives, etc. The basic point is that the bearer of the arms must have a legal personality. A family as such has no collective legal personality, nor does a clan (really--the Scottish courts are very clear on this point). But an incorporated or formally organized clan association does have a legal personality. It can therefore assume arms (in the US) or receive a grant of arms if it meets whatever criteria the granting authority establishes for corporate grants.

Hope that's helpful and not too redundant with what others have posted.

[Joseph McMillan]

In England, personal arms are typically granted to a single individual "to be used by the said [name] and his descendants ... according to the law of arms."

I neglected to point out the similar formula used by Lord Lyon: "We have Devised, and Do by These Presents Assign, Ratify and Confirm unto the Petitioner the said (name) and his descendants with such due and congruent differences as may hereafter be severally matriculated for them, the following Ensigns Armorial..." The grant is thus not merely to a single person but to a group of people defined by common descent from a particular person.