Shreve Family
Coat of Arms
American Shreve family heritage: heraldic artwork and the story of Thomas Sheriff of Plymouth, MA. A project presented by James.
Fide et Constantia
View full-size artwork ↗The Shreve heraldic design
This digital depiction brings together a shield, helmet, crest, decorative mantling, and a motto scroll in a complete heraldic composition.
- The shield
- A white field patterned with black ermine spots, crossed by two red diagonal bands.
- The crest
- A white greyhound head with a gold collar, accompanied by white plumes above the helmet.
- The mantling
- Gold and black ornament surrounds the shield and helmet.
- The motto
- The scroll bears the words “Fide et Constantia.”
Thomas Sheriff of Plymouth, MA
Thomas Sheriff, also associated with the Shreve surname, is the founding ancestor of the American family line chronicled in L. P. Allen’s The Genealogy and History of the Shreve Family from 1641 (1901). The Library of Congress describes that volume as a genealogy of his descendants.
Allen cites Thomas in a Plymouth legal action dated December 7, 1641, and a Portsmouth conveyance dated December 10, 1666. The Order of the Founders and Patriots of America also lists Thomas Shreve/Sheriff with Plymouth in 1641 and Portsmouth in 1675.
This project begins its American Shreve family story with Thomas. These records support his role as a colonial progenitor; they do not establish that every American bearer of the surname descends from him.
Sources: Library of Congress catalog; Allen’s 1901 genealogy; OFPA ancestor list.
Shreve: surname meaning & etymology
Shreve is an English occupational surname with Anglo-Saxon linguistic roots, a variant of Sheriff associated in surname dictionaries with Norfolk.
Etymology and meaning
Root words: Old English scīr means “shire” or administrative district; (ge)rēfa means “reeve,” an official or steward. Together, scīrgerēfa means “shire reeve,” the origin of the word sheriff.
Shire reeve: The title referred to the king’s local administrator in a county, with responsibilities that included law enforcement, revenue collection and county courts. Sheriff could become a surname through an occupation or a nickname.
Spelling variants: Related forms include Shrieve, Shreeve, Shreeves, Shreves, Shrieves and Shrive. The table below distinguishes the forms recorded in different sources.
Historical and geographic context
Early records: SurnameDB cites medieval English records for Huge le Sirreve in 1212 and Alan Sciriue in 1219. These illustrate early related surname forms; they are not a documented pedigree connecting those individuals to Thomas Sheriff.
American lineage: The Shreve family history project places Thomas Sheriff’s arrival in Massachusetts between 1635 and 1638. This page centers on Thomas Sheriff of Plymouth, MA, and the American family line traced in Allen’s genealogy. His Portsmouth, Rhode Island, connection is described in the American roots section.
Notable bearers: Henry Miller Shreve was a steamboat inventor and river-navigation pioneer. Richmond H. Shreve was an architect in the firm Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, which designed the Empire State Building.
Historical context sources: SurnameDB; Shreve family history project; Empire State Building history.
Related surnames and recorded spellings
Recorded forms span several centuries and sources. This list gathers the variants found in the cited references; it is not a claim that every spelling belongs to one documented bloodline.
| Context | Names and spellings |
|---|---|
| Modern surname dictionaries | Shreve, Shreeve, Shreves; Sheriff, Sherriff; Shrieve |
| American Shreve family history | Shreve, Shreves, Shreeve, Shreeves, Shrieve, Shrieves |
| Additional related surname forms | Shrive, Schrieve, Shireff |
| Historical word forms cited by Bardsley | Schyreve, schreve |
Variant sources: Dictionary of American Family Names (2022), via Geneanet; Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland (2016), via Ancestry; Shreve family history project; SurnameDB: Shrieve; Bardsley dictionary excerpts.
Etymology sources: FamilySearch: Shreve and FamilySearch: Sheriff (surname entries drawing on the Dictionary of American Family Names); historical surname dictionary excerpts.
About this project
This depiction is the coat of arms artwork selected for James’s American Shreve Family Tree project, which centers on the family line associated with Thomas Sheriff of Plymouth, MA. Its use here expresses that project’s heritage identity. A historical grant of these exact arms to Thomas, and inherited entitlement to them, have not been verified.