Potter Family Coat of Arms...... Do You Believe It?

Back in January 1987, in Volume 10 of Potter Profiles, I published a copy of the Coat of Arms for the Potter family as created by Halberts Company in Bath, Ohio. This crest showed three black 3-legged cooking pots as the principle feature. Today I did a Google image search for "potter family coat of arms" and found several different variations........ but not a one with three black cooking pots!

The Halbert's rendering explains:  "The Potter Coat of Arms illustrated at left was drawn by an heraldic artist from information officially recorded in ancient heraldic archives. Documentation for the Potter Coat of Arms design can be found in Rietstap Armorial General." I Google searched for that  and found this:

Family Crest SearchThe Best Places to find Family Crests and Coats of Arms on the Web

Rietstap's Armorial General Riestap's Armorial General is a huge collection of family crests gathered from numerous smaller armorials and all put in one multi-volume armorial. There are 130,000 or so European names listed along with a description of each names family crest. Sometimes you will also find the nationality of the owner, his title, if any, and the date of the grant. You probably don't really care about anything else. ******************************************************************** Is there a genuine Potter Coat of Arms in use today? Does any living Potter man have the right to claim and display such? In my understanding the answer is a resounding NO. I suggest you first look at the Wikipedia entry for "coats of arms" to get a foundational understanding of the subject. Coats of arms were valuable and valid in their day but that day was long, long ago.