Richard Perrot, Sr. was a prominent planter & member of the House of Burgesses who died in Virginia ca 1686. Beginning in the late 1800's, several reports have circulated that he used the seal of the 3 pears, thus identifying him as a member of the ancient Perrot family of Pembrokeshire:

• 1892. Tyler, Lyon, G. (Editor) Coats-of-Arms in Virginia, William and Mary Quarterly Historical Papers, Vol I #2 October. Pp 112-121.
On-line transcript is available - note the article never says the seal had 3 pears on it.
• 1896/7. Tyler, Lyon G. Historical and Genealogical Notes, William and Mary Quarterly Historical Papers, Vol IV p 135.
- first to claim seal had 3 pears on it.
• 1908. Crozier, William Armstrong. Virginia Heraldica, Being a Registry of Virginia Gentry Entitled to Coat Armour, with Genealogical Notes of the Families, p 55.
- Note how brief his description of the 3-pear seal is compared to other seal description.
• 1916. Harper, Lillie DuPuy VanCulin. Colonial Men and Times- containing The Journal of Col. Daniel Trabue, the Huguenots, Genealogy, with Brief Sketches of the Allied Families. Innes & Sons, Philadelphia, PA, p 436.

• 1958. Ricaud, Lulu Crosland. The Family of Edward & Ann Snead Crosland 1740-1958, Privately published
• 1967. Scott, Evalyn Parrott. Volume II, Links That Bind, the Parrott Family History, Privately Published, Page 6
  Quoting Mrs. L.Z. Hicks, dated 1952, "I went to the court house myself, and found numbers of the early records and held in my own hands a Parrott paper folded wtih the crest stamped on it." Note the paper is not specified to be Richard's will, nor is the crest described..

  

A quick search on trees posted on the Internet makes it clear that Richard's use of the 3-pear seal is given as fact. The figure below is a recently taken photograph. The seal on the will (This is the seal cited by all the references that claim the seal had the 3 pears on it) of Richard Perrot of Middlesex, Co., Virginia, dated 20 July 1686, was destroyed by flattening it under another piece of paper while the wax was soft enough (it has become hard and brittle in the centuries since), making it highly doubtful anyone has seen the seal since it was filed. Those who wrote about the 3 pears on the seal never saw it. Thus, reports of the seal's existence are purely mythical.

Photo by Kevin T. Lett, 2005.

So, while the 1686 seal has been destroyed, an extant copy of the seal of Richard Perrot and that of his son, Richard Jr., was discovered in 2007 in the library of the University of Virginia. It is on transactions, dated 2 April 1683, to Charles Curtis, brother of Richard Perrot Jr.'s wife Sarah. It is believed that the purpose of these documents was to help extricate Richard Perrot Jr. from some of the crushing debt he had accumulated in the 1670s. So in exchange for £280, part of 800 acres was deeded to Charles Curtis, who later sold the land. Richard's seal does not use the 3-pear design:

Here is another seal of Richard Jr.'s:

A transaction in 1697 between Henry Perrot, adopted son of Richard Perrot Jr., and William Churchill, in which Perrot becomes indebted to Churchill for money, using 140 acres of land as collateral, contains an intact seal as well. This seal appears to be a fox or boar's head coming through some tall grass:

These photos were taken in 2007 by Joseph Parrott. They are on the Churchill Family Papers, MSS 1197, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library. They are posted here with permission of the University of Virginia Library and the Virginia Genealogy Society.

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