Featured Enigmatic!

I'm glad to be of help especially as... This is a subject I know nothing about.

Debora

 

Thx again Deb, if you can come up with the full,name of our Sargento Mayor in the form as it might appear in a list in a book, that’d be great. I’m not sure where his name ends, that R word, part of name or? I plan to run it by Google Books site, I get hits on lots of old stuff there, like the votive cannonballs.

 

I did a bit of searching and there were lots of tercios so there would have been lots of sargentos mayores. Key is probably decoding coat of arms. Wonder if CV doesn't stand for Carlos V. Do you have any idea how old canon is?

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tercio

Debora

 

I’m guessing cannon is 19th C, but who knows. Regarding the coat of arms, all it indicates to me so far is that it definitely isn’t a weapon made by or for the Spanish monarchy. Those had only two choices for Royal property marks. Small ones made for the Crown had. Large “R” for “real” = Royal. Some small ones and most large ones had the Royal cypher = coat of arms. The COA was originally cast integral with tube, so it appeared in relief. After Charles iii ascended to throne, his approved COA was engraved on the gun, and so on with subsequent monarchs.

The COA on that Texas piece has nothing to do with the Spanish monarchy. If you can translate the COA into proper heraldese, we can run it by Google.

 

It wouldn't have been a Philippine Army, but Spanish colonial forces, which included Filipinos.
So maybe search for "Spanish colonial forces in the Philippines", or "Spanish Colonial Army in the Philippines".

When the Dutch VOC occupied parts of Formosa (Taiwan) in the first half of the 17th century, they did so with help of Filipinos who were previously enlisted into the Spanish colonial army. The Spanish colonial army was defeated, and the Filipino soldiers went on to fight for the Dutch instead.

Asian Colonial history is very complicated, with land changing hands so many times, and native soldiers also occasionally changing sides.
But the fact remains that there were native Filipino soldiers fighting for colonial Spain (and the VOC) in the 17th century.

 

Ok here’s another article covering several artifacts including the cannon of interest, GOSP-418. I marked it up with yellow highlights at the parts I found credible and pertinent. The remainder often includes statements I consider pure fantasy, including all of the verbiage speculating on events prior to say 1800 supposedly involving the cannon(s). This article has some hard data we can check and trace, such as names.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/189102681@N07/shares/4fBq00953f

I searched one name in Google books and found an Army “teniente coronel” in a 1910 Argentine book. https://www.flickr.com/photos/189102681@N07/shares/f13Hgt0mq4

I still,need to look up Jurado. Well in Spanish it simply means “jury.” So perhaps it was entered in a competition of some kind and objects were marked this way after review by the appointed jury. Or perhaps “Jurado” meant that proof testing, the usual reason for applying metal stamps to firearms, had been completed successfully. This is a legal requirement in most countries before a firearm, even one designed for firing salutes only, could be fired by the owner.

 

Where can I find the word "JURADO" in link? I just want to check context because it can be a surname, a noun and past participle in Spanish.

Debora

 

I put same image in a post just now in the BIG CANNON PROJECT” fb group, because it is full of the top cannon experts, authors, archaeologists who should know. The stamp image is highlighted in about middle of the 12 page report I linked.

 

Hope you don't mind me wading in here as I know nothing about this subject - but I do love a puzzle! I've been doing a bit of digging around and have a slightly different slant on the wording.
I may be way off track but thought I'd run it past you anyway!

By breaking the letters up in a different way I have come up with this format:

DEL / SARGENTO / MAYOR / Dn / JOAN / ESCUDRO / Y / ARN / FDO

Spelling was not standardised in English and it was probably much the same in Spanish at the time the cannon was made.

I wonder if JOAN could actually mean Juan? Although there is an "e" missing from the inscription the next word could be a form of ESCUDERO which is a surname but also means squire or esquire, also originally a shield bearer. The "Y" may simply be the Spanish word for "and".
An archaic Spanish word for straps that secured armour in place is "arnés" - like the English word harness - so the ARN at the end could possibly be an abbreviation meaning "armourer".
FDO (abbreviation of firmado) means "signed" or "made" as Debora has already said.
Just my take on it for what it's worth!

 

Joan does mean Juan in Catalan. And I think you interpretation of inscription is very interesting.

Debora

 

L2, thanks, welcome, any input is welcome, this object doesn’t follow many rules or we’d have it well-identified by now. Let me ask if you concur with Mr. Tunnell’s interpretation of the “presentation plaque.” I think the top Image is what he means, with his interpretation below. From his article I linked. https://flic.kr/p/2p8Q5vf

 

Oops, I truly hadn't seen that - I spent ages working it out too! Great minds and all that!!
That will teach me to read everything before posting.

 

No problem, u might have come up with something better. I’m interested in your take on ARN, better than the nothing we have otherwise. I tried various Spanish dictionary sites which now always give RNA, the science term, for ARN and we know that’s wrong. I found my thick volumes of Johan F. Stockel’s work on proofmarks, all the thousands known up to the 1939 pub date, and there’s nothing like ours, the right-facing lion under JURADO. Friends on the BIG CANNON PROJECT fb group think it means proved in the usual sense of a live firing test with overloads.

 

I found a snippet on Google Books that may actually fit. (Yeah, I know... A long, long shot.) The book is entitled Coat of Arms and Surnames. Quick translation...

"Don Juan Escudero, a resident of Tudela, appeared in 1563 before the Courts of Navarra, proving to be... Sergeant Major of the Royals
Armies, that he went on to reside in New Spain, from where he carried out the following..."

Unfortunately, because it's edited, one can't be sure the Sergeant Major reference is about don Juan but it very well may be.

New Spain is, of course, any Spanish possession in the Western Hemisphere.


Here's another snippet with quick translation. (It repeats some of the information above.)

"Don Juan Escudero, a resident of Tudela, appeared in 1563 before the Courts of Navarra, proving to be a descendant of the noble houses of his surnames located in Buñel and Cascante, and Don Miguel Martin, Don Juan and Don Jerónimo Escudero, brothers, residents of Valtierra , went there for the same purpose in 1550. All of them were recognized for their nobility of blood.

In Vergara, Guipúzcoa, lived a branch of this surname, to which Don Juan Escudero belonged, born there in the year 1580, who, with his wife Doña Catalina de Arnedo, procreated Don..."



The children of don Juan Escudero and doña Catalina de Arnedo would have carried the surnames Escudero y Arnedo.

Debora

 

Here's the coat of arms of a noble family from Tudela. It provides a better image of the elaborate cross also seen in the upper right quadrant above.

Debora

 

Wow -

This is the piece I found with regards to ARN -

English translation of 'arnés'
Word Frequency
arnés
Lat Am Spain
MASCULINE NOUN
1. (Military, History) armour (esp Brit) ⧫ armor (US)
2. (en montañismo, paracaidismo) harness
See arnés de seguridad
3.
arneses
1. (= arreos) harness singular ⧫ trappings
2. (= avíos) gear singular ⧫ tackle singular
Copyright © by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.

There was another part about the abbreviation but I can't find it again.

 

Same book. I was able to retrieve a slightly different snippet. There was a don Juan Escudero y Arnedo.

"...Arnedo, his countrywoman, born from this union on June 15, 1663, Don Juan Escudero y Arnedo, Mayor of the Brotherhood for the noble state of Vergara and Sergeant Major of the Royal Armies, who went on to reside in the
New Spain ..."



Debora

 

Wow, great work - wouldn't it be amazing if it were the same person! If so the cannon is much older than first thought.

 

Here's information about the Alcalde de la Santa Hermandad, translated poorly above (by Google) as "Mayor of the Brotherhood."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcalde_de_la_Santa_Hermandad

Debora