Avery Logo
Many people have asked me why I use images that depict a European coat of arms for a business that primarily provides research for persons of Anishinaabeg descent. The reason is simple - my father Gale Avery, was not Indian, his family originated in England. Often when I was conducting research or discussing projects, my father would ask if I ever thought about researching the Avery side of my lineage. Truth be told, I never had. It's not like you need documentary evidence to prove to anyone that you are English. But after he had asked me a number of times, we planned a trip to the Library of Michigan to research the Avery family's lineage. We spent a good eight hours researching and had traced the Avery side of our family back to the 1700's without too much difficulty.
During the course of our research we discovered published works pertaining to the Rockefeller family's ancestral lineage. The Rockefellers believed that they had descended from French Royalty and paid researchers and genealogists from all around the world to trace their lineage and their spouses, which were then published in two volumes. One of the spouses happened to be an Avery that we were related to, making our task very simple.
My father had described the Avery coat of arms to me once when I was young and I had painted a small picture of what I thought it would look like based upon his recollection. I used the artwork to have some letterhead printed for him and gave him the painting in case he ever wanted to have more made.
I had not seen the Avery coat of arms at that time and didn't understand in my youth that coats of arms are inherited in the male line along with the surname. However, a coat of arms is granted or confirmed to one person and their descendants in the legitimate male line so only that family group would be entitled to the coat of arms, not everybody of that surname. I'm not certain that my father ever knew that.
What he had shared with me was that it was a shield of red with three gold circles, two on the top and one on the bottom. There was a helm at the top of the shield and there was a lion somewhere, but he couldn't quite remember where it was placed. In his narrative, the three circles represented something like Honor, Strength, and Loyalty - but again, he couldn't quite remember what the correct attributes were associated with them. The shield was framed on both sides by flowing ribbons of red and gold.
In my child's mind, before the age of the internet, and having only ever seen a coat of arms in an encyclopedia...this is what I came up with.
My father found the above image of the Avery coat of arms while researching online, and though the image he found was not taken from this particular book, The Avery, Fairchild & Park Families, written by Samuel Putnam Avery, it was the same exact image. He was convinced that this was the Avery coat of arms that he had been told was the coat of arms for our family. However, this image was traced specifically to a William Avery, and according to all of our own research we never descended from anyone by the name of William Avery. Sure we had lots of people named William Avery in our family tree, but none that were of an age or had been connected in any way to the geographic areas that this specific Avery family, who had owned the Avery coat of arms, had been known to have resided in. It was perplexing.
This book clearly details the facts pertaining to the Avery family that were the owners of this coat of arms for hundreds of years, which does not corollate to the known facts of our Avery lineage.
This color image of the Avery Coat of Arms shown above was painted by Charles Gager Phillips in 1908. According to the book written by Edmund R. Gager, titled “The Gager Family”, Samuel Levi Gager, Jan 2, 1810 – Aug 2, 1885, married Sophronia F. Avery on Jan 24, 1833, who was the daughter of Charles Avery and Sarah King. I like this image because it is very similar in appearance to my current logo, which I had designed prior to ever seeing this artwork. We likewise, have no known connection to this Gager and Avery.
This was my original logo which served as my service mark for my corporate letter head and watermark before my father had found the Avery coat of arms. I felt it paid respect to his European origins and what I believed my task was as a researcher, which is to document facts. It was simple and non-descript.
Once my father had discovered the Avery coat of arms, which he believed was our family's, I incorporated more of the imagery from that artwork into my current logo. Even though I have no direct evidence of the connection between the William Avery family that had owned the original coat of arms for hundreds of years, and my own Avery family. My father's conviction was good enough, in my mind, for me to make the change to the logo.
Though it is not exactly like the original coat of arms, it does incorporate several components of the iconography.
If I were to ever definitively establish a connection to this Avery lineage, I would probably redesign the logo to incorporate the lions jambs and the besant instead of the crown it currently has. I added the crown as something I had read regarding the origin of the name translated to "elven king." The scroll and quills are again related to my task as a researcher.
To further complicate the issue, there are several coat of arms which are associated with the Avery family from England. Oddly enough one of them looks amazingly like the artwork I have incorporated into my corporate logo as is shown on page 38 in the book, The Groton Avery Clan, which was written by Elroy McKendree Avery, and Catherine Hitchcock Tilden Avery in 1912.