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 who wrote about the 3 pears on the seal ever saw it. Thus, reports of its 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, 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:

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. For more details, see:

• Reksten, Harald and Wayne Parrott. 2009. A re-examination of the relationships among the Parrott families of the American Colonies in the 17th century. Magazine of Virginia Genealogy Feb 47(1):21-43 & May 47(2):129-147.