Quote:
I take that back. I did discover that the Czarnomskis were gentry, and members of the Grabie clan, so our coat of arms is a wooden rake on a green and yellow ground. How appropriate.
I take that back. new research show us members of a different clan with a horseshoe on our shield.
just be sure you don't USE that coat of arms around someone who is aware of the usage of coats of arms ...
was carefully explained to me, that the only one allowed to use that, was the eldest son of the eldest son of the .. (you get the picture)
now it could be different in Poland ... because my informant was talking of British and French insignia ..
so it may follow the rules of Scottish clan tartan usage instead
some people become quite vehement about the matter ... (oopsie !)
my lot were mainly tradesmen ... grocers, curriers, shoemakers, cabinetmakers, smiths, tavern keepers; most of them also farmed, then there were the seacaptains and Reverends (lots of those) ... almost everyone here by 1690 ...
From Wikipedia-
Membership in a Polish clan does not always connote consanguinity or even territoriality, as do Scottish clan, but refers to the fact that member families belong to the same heraldic clan. This is why hundreds of different, sometimes unrelated families are to be found within the same clan with all of them being entitled to use the same coat of arms. For this reason, rather than being parallel to the Scottish clan model, the Polish clan system may be considered as being more akin to the Scandinavian ætt and the Germanic sippia.
Also from Wikipedia
Although the Polish heraldic system evolved under the influence of French and German heraldry, there are many notable differences.
The most striking peculiarity of the system is that a coat of arms does not belong to a single family. A number of unrelated families (sometimes hundreds of them), usually with a number of different family names, may use the same, undifferenced coat of arms, and each coat of arms has its own name. The total number of coats of arms in this system was relatively low ca. 200 in the late Middle Ages. The same can be also seen in Western Europe, when families of different surnames but sharing clan origin would use similar coats-of-arms, the fleur-de-lis of the many Capetian families being perhaps the best known example.
