A Mysterious Print
After gaining an interest in heraldry through looking into the Rix coat of arms, I was surprised to have another opportunity arise seemingly out of nowhere.
I was rifling through some binders that had been on our bookshelves for years and I happened upon one that my wife’s grandparents had given her decades earlier about her family history. To my surprise, the following image was on the first page:
There are several oddities about the printed image. For one, the letter “K” on the shield is something I have never seen before. Another strange characteristic is the number of colors on the shield. Two (the “metal” and the “tincture”) is the standard for most shields (although there are many exceptions). All of this made me wonder if it could possibly be accurate, or merely one of the many arms available for purchase. Such coats of arms are usually not researched and often have no clear connection to the family in question, but only to the surname. I decided to look into it further.
There are, of course, many different spellings of the name that eventually became “Kofford.” Most of the variants are of Danish origin, specifically from the island of Bornholm. Before that, they come from Lübeck, Germany. The spelling “Covot” originates there, but then other variants appear, such as “Koffot,” “Koffod,” “Kofod,” “Koefoed,” “Kofoed,” as well as others.
The Koefoeds are a long line of nobles. The link to Lübeck is important, because it was the wealthiest city in Northern Europe in the 1400s, and the center of Baltic trade. The Covot line were merchants who probably traveled back and forth between Lübeck and Bornholm.
One name that is mentioned in the records is Jens Petersen Kofoed (1628-1691). He was a complex and fascinating figure. I will not spend time on his life here, as it is documented elsewhere.
The Jens Pedersen Kofoed Link
In any case, it is clear that there is a coat of arms associated with Jens, as there is a painting of him in the Bornholm Museum (see image).
In the upper right corner of that painting is a coat of arms.This coat of arms, although small, is still identifiable. It appears to be a red shield with a blue chevron, and the helmet atop the shield has long horns.
This coat of arms is clearly different in key ways from the print included in the binder, although the chevron as the primary charge (shape) on the shield is correct.
After some digging, I found that not only is my wife related directly to Jens’s aunt, Karen Hansdatter Kofoed (1600-1643), but to my great surprise I learned that I am also related directly to Jens’s older brother, Hans Pedersen Kofoed (1627-1677). That means that my wife and I are both directly related to Jens’s grandfather, Hans Madsen Koefoed (1547-1623). He is my 11th- and my wife’s 12th-Great Grandfather.
High Confidence
In contrast to some of the other ancestors I have found where the relationships lack clear documentation, even if the evidence regarding the coats of arms is clear, I can state with high confidence that both my wife and I are directly related to Hans Madsen Koefoed. For my part, the link to Bornholm goes through Charles Hans Michel Valentine, who was born there in 1846. His mother, Engel Margrethe Olesdatter Kofoed (1816-1883), is the direct link into this line. Both Charles and his mother emigrated to the United States and later died in Idaho and Utah, respectively.
Hans Madsen Koefoed’s Coat of Arms
Hans was a man of some renown in Bornholm. He appears to have personally selected this coat of arms in 1595 (read more), ostensibly as an adaptation of his mother’s family’s arms (see a short biography; read more about the Koefoed and Uf arms). Thus, my wife and I both are direct descendants from the holder of this Danish coat of arms.
As one can see from the image, it contains the same features as the image from Jens’s portrait: a chevron on the shield, and the long horns protruding from the helmet.
The Appearance of the Coat of Arms
Based on the image in Jens’s portrait above, the standardized våbenbeskrivelse (description of the arms) would be:
Skjold: I rødt en blå sparre
Hjelmtegn: To udadvendte, åbne vesselhorn i naturlig farve
Danish heraldry differs from English heraldry in some interesting ways (read more here). I will merely summarize for my purposes.
The shield (skjold) is “In red a blue chevron.” That is, the main color of the shield is red, and then the primary shape within it is a blue chevron.
The crest (hjelmtegn) is “two outward-turned, open vesselhorns in natural color.” These protruding horns are unique to German and Scandinavian heraldry. They are buffalo horns, called “vesselhorns.” They most likely represent the horns of the European bison. The openings at the ends are common characteristics of these horns. The colors used on the horns typically were artistic in nature, rather than signifying an identity. For example, the horns of the Kofoed line are described as white in this source, but the images above do not suggest any color, and so this depiction does not either.
As I noted above, it is somewhat unusual to have two colors in one shield, but multiple records attribute this design directly to Hans (see here; and also here). As the painting above demonstrates, the design endured long after Hans as well.
Other lines of Hans’s descendants may have changed the color of the chevron for distinction, as I will explain below.
Other Variants
Due to the lack of regulation of Danish heraldry throughout the centuries, there are some variations of this coat of arms. For one, the exact tincture of the chevron varied based on the line of Koefoed descendants.
Before the chevron, however, it was common practice to use the literal translation of Koefoed “cow’s foot” as the image on the shield. In heraldry, there is a long tradition of matching charges with names, called canting. However, in English heraldry the charged were made from the name. In Danish heraldry, the process was reversed, and the name frequently came from the charge on the shield. This practice is called talende våben: “speaking arms.” In fact, because Danes did not have official surnames for most of history (instead practicing patronymics), when they finally adopted surnames in the 1800s it was not unusual to merely take the literal description from the charges (objects) on their coats of arms and use that as a surname. Indeed, many Danes had already long referred to one another using the arms before the adoption of official surnames because the charge on the shield was often a better clue of a person’s lineage than was his name.
Therefore, it is perhaps not surprising that some images of the Koefoed coat of arms combines the cow’s foot with the chevron, as can be seen in the wood carving.
This one was posted by the Bornholm Museum (see original post).
Final Thoughts
Regardless of the precise appearance, the Kofford/Kofoed/Koefoed/et al. coat of arms is a wonderful and fascinating symbol of our ancestry. I am very pleased that I do have a clear and documented link to this one, and it certainly has noble origins. There is a wealth of clear documentation of the nobility of the Koefoeds running all the way back to the “Covot” variant closely associated with Lübeck.I am proud to share its history with my spouse and our children. I wonder how Hans would react if he could know how many of us there would be, and in America, no less.