John Ross Delafield
ARMS: Sable a cross flory or a lion rampant.
SOURCE/NOTES & CREDITS: Arms blazon, background illustration and text are from the Letters Patent of arms from the College of Arms in England, dated 10 February 1917, to a British subject cousin, one Arthur John Lewis Delafield, with a destination wide enough to include the American Delafields, from “Delafield, The Family History”, Vol. 2, 1946. The text was adapted by D. Q. Wedvick from the same source, Nat Taylor’s internet article, “The Delafield Quarterings”(English Arms for Americans), 2009, from Woodcock & Robinson’s “The Oxford Guide to Heraldry”, Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, 1988, pages 168-169 and from the Veteran Corps of Artillery Historical Database which we maintained from 1997-2013.
John Ross Delafield ( 1874-1964) was elected Vice Commandant and Lt. Colonel of the Veteran Corps of Artillery, State of New York, an Historic Military Command founded in 1790, in 1916 and then proceeded to lead the Artillery Service Detachment of the VCA a unit of over 1100 men thru its WW1 era of “home defense” in 1916-1917. He was later commissioned a Brig. Gen. in the US Army Reserve in the Ordnance Corps. An attorney of an old New York family and aristocratic pursuits, he in the period 1916-1932 became America’s greatest heraldic grant of arms collector-obtainer almost equaling in his endeavours Lt. Col. Robert Gayre of Gayre & Nigg’s feat in forming a clan. Delafield managed to get seven retrospective grants for various families intermarried with his own Delafields the eighth family between the Lord Lyon and the COA getting the latter to start the practice of granting honorary arms to Americans ! dqw 2015 0604
The artwork is a rendering by John Hamilton Gaylor.
Wedvick Armorial, 149 Delafield, 20100527
