THE HARTOV FAMILY

 

The Hartov family does not by any standard belong to the larger noble families and is thus not particularly distinguished, albeit in general a rather cheery lot. The crest to the right was adopted as the family crest by our chimera ancestor, Sir Maximus Hartov, in 1683 when he was knighted by His Franchy Majesty, King Ormond the Second. A poet and a scholar, Sir Maximus chose the quill to adorn his crest. The two stars on a dark blue background represents the sky of the late Nordic summer evenings where he gazed absent-mindedly into the air waiting for inspiration to descend upon him. Incidentally this also explains the origin of his motto 'Sous la Lumière Bleue'. As the muses rarely visited he whithered away in poverty and died a lonely man, leaving only his crest and his good name to his successors who to this day faithfully uphold his tradition of being short of perquisites. Having managed, however, to capture the essence of imparting information to a larger public both in oral and written form, the family motto was consequently changed to 'Rem Tene Verba Sequentur'.

It should be noted that this site belongs to the Danish Hartov family. We are aware that other Hartov families exist in Israel and the USA, but we are not related.