Please help translate Welsh motto from Pierre Robert crest

[Huwcyn]

I just typed 'Pierre Robert Welsh' into Google , in the hope that something came up !.
They all seemed quite similar to the above, though, with nothing sourced or definitive.

[Pierre Robert]

Thanks again.  I've enjoyed reading and learning about Eisteddfod tonight. Quite a tradition.

[davidbappleton]

I checked a lot of the usual resources to try to hunt down the coat of arms: Burke's General Armory, Papworth's Ordinary of British Armorials, Crozier's American Armory, and Matthews' American Armory and Blue Book.  The only one I had any luck in was in Bolton's An American Armory, which cited the following:

Robert  Arg (?) 2 chev sa, a mullet in chief.
     Crest: a mullet
     Motto: Caton wrth caton Dow a Digon (Heart to Heart God over all)
     Bookplate photo.  Santee, S.C., 1686.  From Basle, Switz.

Some of the colors are missing, and one is questioned.  (It also doesn't match with the picture that you posted.  Bolton questions it as a white shield, while yours is red.)

However, a more complete blazon from Bolton would be: Argent(?), two chevrons sable and a mullet in chief (no color given).

In plain English, this would be: On a white(?) shield, two black chevrons (the inverted V shapes) and in chief a five-pointed star.

The crest is also given as a five-pointed star.  The color of both stars, while likely the same, is not known, at least to Bolton.

And, of course, Santee, S.C. is Santee, South Carolina.

I hope that this information is helpful to you.

David

[Pierre Robert]

Thanks so much for your help. The Bolton reference seems to confirm the motto is accurate, if misspelled or miscopied -- or perhaps there are simply variations in spelling.  I found the index to Bolton's book on line where he noted that the mottos had not been spelling corrected -  he merely recorded what he found.

Please let me know if you have any suggestions on where else to look for visual references to the design, or how best to explore its origins.  Also, would it be accurate to assume that a coat of arms would have been given or awarded or authorized for a service that had been performed, or would there be another reason? As noted in an earlier post, I am very new to all this.

Thanks again for your help.

[davidbappleton]

Please let me know if you have any suggestions on where else to look for visual references to the design, or how best to explore its origins.  Also, would it be accurate to assume that a coat of arms would have been given or awarded or authorized for a service that had been performed, or would there be another reason? As noted in an earlier post, I am very new to all this.

Given the likely Swiss origins of the coat of arms, I've tried looking through Rietstap's Armorial Général, with some 120,000 coats of arms from all over Europe, but while he lists a number of Robert's, none of them match your coat of arms here.  Of the closest ones, one (from Languedoc) has a single chevron with two stars above it and a rose beneath it, while the other (to a Roberti from Flanders, dated 1652) has two chevrons with two stars above it and a lion's head beneath it.  (And the colors in both instances are different from yours.)

I'm not sure of the best places to continue the search from here.  There are very few Swiss armorials available in any form for us to look in.

As for the reason for having the coat of arms, while in many countries they are granted for various kinds of service, in many other instances they are simply self-assumed; that is to say, the person using the arms just started using them.  This can be especially true in countries, like Switzerland, where there was no granting authority (such as the English College of Arms) or crowned head to give such coats.  In other instances, as still happens today unfortunately, a person may go to a painter or artist and ask for a drawing of their "family coat of arms," and receive a drawing of a coat of arm with their surname attached to it, but which may not belong to their family line at all, but only to another family with the same (or a similar) surname).  This sort of "bucket shop heraldry" has been going on for centuries.  (I've researched instances of this in early 18th Century New England, for example.)

So the bottom line, I'm afraid, is that until we can know more about the origins of the coat of arms itself, it's very difficult to say why, or even whether, it was granted or awarded.

I'm sorry that I haven't been of greater help to you in tracking down this coat of arms.  If you have any additional questions, or if I can be of further assistance to you, please don't hesitate to ask here.

David

[Morganllan]

......
Robert  Arg (?) 2 chev sa, a mullet in chief.
     Crest: a mullet
     Motto: Caton wrth caton Dow a Digon (Heart to Heart God over all)
     Bookplate photo.  Santee, S.C., 1686.  From Basle, Switz.

Calon = Heart, so Caton should be Calon, and "Calon wrth Galon" is the correct 1st phrase.
Duw = God, so 2nd phrase should be "Duw a digon"

[behindthefrogs]

Given the likely Swiss origins of the coat of arms, I've tried looking through Rietstap's Armorial Général, with some 120,000 coats of arms from all over Europe, but while he lists a number of Robert's, none of them match your coat of arms here.  Of the closest ones, one (from Languedoc) has a single chevron with two stars above it and a rose beneath it, while the other (to a Roberti from Flanders, dated 1652) has two chevrons with two stars above it and a lion's head beneath it.  (And the colors in both instances are different from yours.)

As for the reason for having the coat of arms, while in many countries they are granted for various kinds of service, in many other instances they are simply self-assumed; that is to say, the person using the arms just started using them.  This can be especially true in countries, like Switzerland, where there was no granting authority (such as the English College of Arms) or crowned head to give such coats.  In other instances, as still happens today unfortunately, a person may go to a painter or artist and ask for a drawing of their "family coat of arms," and receive a drawing of a coat of arm with their surname attached to it, but which may not belong to their family line at all, but only to another family with the same (or a similar) surname).  This sort of "bucket shop heraldry" has been going on for centuries.  (I've researched instances of this in early 18th Century New England, for example.)

David

The coats of arms found above that have differences (variations) from yours might be good rather than bad news.  Close members of the family are often granted arms with distinct differences from the original arms that were granted.  This makes it less certain that the arms came from a bucket shop.
 
However at the end of the 19th century in the UK and the USA a lot of people constructed a coat of arms for themselves from ones that they found in books.  This means that we are back to the view that you need to find the origin of yours.

You might make progress by find the surnames of the female lines that link into your family.  One of these might be the same as those discovered above. 

[Pierre Robert]

Thanks so much for your insight and encouragement. You are a friend and I am indebted.  I have also found some help through the Huguenot Society of South Carolina and the Historical Museum in Charleston and have discovered that there is a book in our library here in Birmingham that may have some of the Robert's family's crests or coats of arms. I  hope to research that over the weekend.

Again, thanks for your generosity of interest in helping me unravel an intriguing family mystery.  My bet at this point is that the Robert or Rhobert family originated in Wales and later moved to Switzerland or France and then to Switzerland. Not placing any money on that theory, but it's fun thinking about it.

[Pierre Robert]

I have found in the book Our Family Circle a Robert coat of arms almost identical to the one from my great-grandmother's family.  I am attaching it here and asking if anyone can explain why the motto should not read "CALON WRTH CALON" as appears on this version instead of "CALON WRTH GALON" as suggested by Morgan.  Also, I have seen the second part of the motto spelled "DOW A DIGON" as on the attached coat of arms and am wondering if that is an acceptable version of "DUW A DIGON" as suggested by Morgan.

Can anyone shed more light on this?  Thanks.