Believe it or not, there is also a family coat of arms!

Personally I am very sceptical towards these. They should have a foundation somewhere. One would think that with a family coat of arms, some ancestor should have belonged to the nobility. One would also expect the image to have some bearing on the family name, or on some kind of attribute. The meaning of the archer is not at all clear to me.

I do know that many would-be genealogists are eager to  fake arms themselves.

Maybe someone has some historical background on this?

And here it is!

The orphan papers of Johannes Govertse Viergever (7 May 1703) was sealed with the following seal, which clearly contains the same archer.

The seal is in the municipal library at Zierikzee (all cities and villages on the island of Schouwen-Duivenland now form one municipality). When both parent sdied and their children were still in infancy, a description of all assets was made to avoid disagreement at a later time. These orphan papers were made by the notary and often sealed with a coat of arms. In case there were no troubles these papers stayed some time with the notary and after longer time they ended up in the county library. It seems that there are also pictures of a person with a rifle, and one of a person with a gun.
To be investigated at a later stage.

I have no data on this Johannes Govertse Viergever yet. The year 1703 might have been the date that the parents died. It is not clear to me if Johannes was the deceased father or the orphaned son. Either way, Johannes must have been born some years before. That makes him a contemporary of Daniel Goverts Viergever, who died 1708. Both men have the Govert patronym. They might have been brothers, although Johannes is not mentioned in any of the family trees I have found so far. If they *were* brothers, Johannes and Daniel might have decided to change their names to Viergever, while other brothers and sisters kept the name Vlam.

Yet again there is no clue as to why.

All information contained in these pages was either sent to me for publication,
or was obtained from publicly available sources, such as the Internet or telephone guides.
Your webmaster: André Viergever (family@e-m-a-i-l.nu)