A patron of the Ridgecrest Branch of the Kern County Library requested a copy of a "coat of arms for the family 'Sassone' from the southern part of Italy around Naples in the mountains." The information that we received from the library seemed to imply that the patron had seen a coat of arms for this family in a book held by the Ridgecrest branch twenty years ago.
This question provided me with the opportunity to use one of my favorite resources:
V. & H. V. Rolland's Illustrations to the Armorial General by J.-B. RiestapThis work contains "85,000 shields of arms [which] illustrate every one mentioned in Riestap's 'Armorial General'" (from the preface). Unfortunately, it did not contain a shield of arms for the family "Sassone". The other heraldry resources available to us here at the Fresno County Public Library deal mainly with British heraldry. I made a trip to the Madden Library at CSU Fresno at some point during the course of my search. Here I was able to verify that the surname "Sassone" is associated with a region outside of Naples, but I found nothing to assist me in locating a coat of arms.
Genealogical Publishing Company, Baltimore, 1967.
Feeling a little desperate, I turned to searching the web using search engines (Google and AltaVista), hoping to find that easy answer, or at least a clue. I used various combinations of "sassone" with "coats of arms" and "heraldry", or just "sassone" by itself. Nothing helpul was found.
Returning to print resources, I wanted to find out if there were any print resources that dealt with just Italian heraldry. The resources listed in Balay's "Guide to Reference Books" (11th ed.) were limitted. I was able to find a more thorough bibliography at the Library of Congress Bibliographies, Research Guides and Finding Aids. This is a long list of bibliographies compiled by specialists at the Library of Congress covering a variety of subjects, including genealogical matters. Here I was able to find Heraldry: a Selected List of References. There were a few Italian heraldry resources listed here. After checking OCLC WorldCat to judge the availability of these, I selected one that was held by the Los Angeles Public Library. The others were very obscure, and although we could request that the Library of Congress fax copies to us, we like to reserve this option as a last resort.
The resource of choice was:
Crollalanza, Giovanni B. di.This citation translates into English using BabelFish as follows:
Dizionario storico-blasonico delle famiglie nobile e notablili italiane estinti e fiorenti.
Pisa, Presso la direczione del Geornale araldico,
886-96. 3 v. col. coats of arms.
CS757.C8
Crollalanza, Giovanni B. of.A reprint of this source (Bologna, Forni, 1965) was located in the Los Angeles Public Library's genealogy department. I requested that FirstSource (a service to reference centers in California) fax anything in this source about the surname "Sassone". I also asked them to check other sources in this part of the collection that appeared useful. It was only the "Dizionario storico-blasonico" that had useful information. I have transcribed it here:
Historical-blasonico dictionary of the families noble and notablili extinct Italians and flourishing.
Pisa, Near the direczione of the heraldic Geornale,
1886-96. 3 v. col. coats of arms.
CS757.C8
SASSONE di Napoli - Antica patrizia famiglia napoletana ascritta al seggio di Porto, che vanta un'Adriana consorta e consigliera di Gioviane Pontano - Arma: Di rosso, alla tigre passante d'oro, cavalcata da un uomo nudo di carnagione.And in english, once again using BabelFish:
SASSONE of Naples - Ancient patrizia ascribed Neapolitan family to the seat of Port, that it boasts a Adriana consorta and consigliera of Gioviane Pontano - Arm: Of red, to the passing tiger of gold, ridden from a man complexion knot.This was encouraging, because not only had I verified that a coat of arms existed, but I had an idea of what it looks like.
After this, I thought I would take a more serious look at the heraldry resources on the Web. I was amazed at the number of web sites that had illustrations of coats of arms for hundreds of surnames. The two that I found the most useful were HERALDIA and Association of Amateur Heralds Website. Both of these sites have a good list of links to other coats of arms resources on the web. The list at the HERALDIA web site can be found at A guide to Armorial Resourses on the Internet.
Both of these web sites seem to express a genuine interest in helping others do heraldry research, free of charge. At this point I was ready to pass this question on to an expert. I chose to contact "George Romanenkov" at the HERALDIA web site by e-mail. I supplied him with the description from the "Dizionario storico-blasonico", and he said he would be happy to look into it. This lead to quite an extensive correspondence which, unfortunately, did not result in locating an illustration of the Sassone family coat of arms, but did result in promises to assist each other with heraldry question in the future.
As a last resort, I faxed a request to our contact at the Library of Congress and asked him to check some of the obscure titles in their collection listed in the bibliography mentioned above. He forwarded our request to a specialist in this subject. This specialist responded that he was not able to find an illustration of the coat of arms either.
So we were not able to supply the patron with an illustration of the coat of arms for the family "Sassone" of Naples, Italy. At least we were able to provide a description. And I also forwarded George Romanenkov's e-mail address to the patron in case the patron wanted to hire an artist to create an illustration. George had offered to recommend one.
Mike Drake, SJVIS