does anyone know a website I can go to to find out what my family crest looks like for free?

Answer 1

Hey heyitsmej...,

Here is a stack of them. Don't put too much stock in family crest sites though. There is no substitute for Genealogy like knowing your real family tree.

Answer 2

sorry to disappoint you, but most people (like 98%) do NOT have a family crest. Unless you decend from royalty or nobility, anybody who says they can show you your family crest is yanking your chain. During the feudal times, most of us were peasants/slaves/servants-- illiterate and in no way able to concoct a family crest.

For information on your family try genealogy.com ($$), rootsweb.com (free) or familysearch.org (free site). Looking up your family history is fascinating. Start by talking with relatives and visiting grave sites. "The Idiot's Guide to Genealogy" is a really great beginners guide. Have fun!

Answer 3

This is a text file I copy because I'm a slow typist. If you asked about a family crest instead of a family coat of arms, you should know that a crest is just the top part of a coat of arms.

With a couple of rare exceptions from Eastern Europe, coats of arms were given to specific individuals, not families. The oldest legitimate son inherits it.

Suppose Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Richard Smith and Sir Harold Smith all get Coats of Arms in 1512. By 2006 there is one legitimate eldest son of eldest son of eldest son . . . each, for a total of three men. (Unless someone died before he had a son.)

BUT - there are four million Smiths in the US, England, Canada, Australia, plus the branch of the family in Argentina started in 1912, after the trouble with the bank auditors in Philadelphia.

You are a merchant, selling plaques, coffee mugs, T-shirts and parchment-colored paper scrolls with coats of arms on them. (Everything is high quality, low cost, of course.) Hmmmm. Which would get you more sales - to sell them to those three eldest sons, or to the four MILLION people with surname Smith, including some who were "Schmidt" or "Smithkowski" or "Wjoschmitz" before they came through Ellis Island?

You can see why some people would want to advertise "Family" Coats of Arms. They can sell them to every Tom, Dick and Harry. To be fair to them, they are meeting a need. People want to think of their ancestors as riding down the lane in a shining coat of armor, not mucking out the kinghtly stable. If there wasn't a huge demand for "Family" coats of arms, there wouldn't be merchants vending same.

What you get with a "Family" coat of arms is a C of A that was once awarded to someone with that surname, usually. If they get an order for 50 T-shirts for a reunion and can't find a C of A that had ever been awarded to someone of that surname, you get the best guess of the guy in the graphics department, who uses a lot of lions rampant on a crimson field with verdant argules.

Wikipedia has articles on Coats of Arms and heraldry, if you are interested.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraldry