Tale of a Signet Ring

TALE OF A SIGNET RING
connecting Worminghall, England with Havelock North, New Zealand

Mark von Dadelszen

The creation of a digital archive for the history of Hawke’s Bay and its people, the Knowledge Bank, was the inspired dream of the late James Morgan. James asked me [to] assist by doing the necessary legal work (without charge) to establish the Trust and have it accepted as a charity in 2011. When the Knowledge Bank was opened I deposited information about the von Dadelszen family with the Knowledge Bank contained in the Story of a Family, a history of our family written in the 1980’s by my late father, John von Dadelszen. That simple action had an amazing result in 2022.

In early 2022 the Knowledge Bank informed me that London auctioneers had a signet ring for sale, and that the background to crest and motto on the ring in the auctioneers’ catalogue was derived from the Hawke’s Bay Knowledge Bank:

Lot 119

A late 19th century gold signet ring, engraved with crest and motto, stamped ‘18CT’. ring size M-N.

The crest is from the von Dadelszen family with motto ‘Per Ardua Surgam’, translating as ‘Through trials I shall rise’.

This crest, now used by the New Zealand branch of the family, may well have been derived from the German family Stoppel, originating in the early 17th century, and consisting of three golden ears of corn standing upright on a stubble field. In medieval times ‘stoppeln’ was a common word for raking or collecting field crops. (Stoppel translates as ‘stubble’ in German). The Stoppels were Lutheran protestants so the three ears could be the symbol of the Lutheran motto “loyal – firm – true”.

The first appearance of the Stoppel surname in the Von Dadelszen family appeared with the marriage of Michael David von Dadelszen son of Michael David a Dadelszen (1760-1831) to Christina Dorothea Stoppel. Numerous other members of the Stoppel family married into the Von Dadelszen family.

How the ring came to be auctioned was explained to me by the auctioneers: “… some background information on the ring, the vendor’s late father actually found it some 25-30 years ago whilst metal detecting near a small village called Worminghall, in Buckinghamshire, close to the Oxfordshire border.” I am not

aware of any von Dadelszen connections with Worminghall or anywhere near to it in the 19th century or later.

Due to the late James Morgan, the existence of the Hawke’s Bay Knowledge Bank, the wonders of the Internet, and the diligent research of the staff of the London auctioneers, the signet ring is now reunited with the von Dadelszen family.