Where can I find my family crest / coat of arms?

Question

There are dozens of websites offering images of my family crest, but they all give different results. Where is the best place to find an authentic family crest? Thanks!

Answer 1

Hey New Creation,

There are many, and they would love to sell you something. Your real family history is with your own personal family tree - the difficult part is putting it together. An Authentic family crest is really a thing of the past. You are likely generations removed from any legitimate family crest.

Discover your real roots, and let us help you with your finding your family tree. Put your surname into the website below, and see what comes up. Search GENFORUM for your Surnames. Each maiden name at each prior generation adds another to your list.

Family Crests are not anything important today, but here are the sites from my collection.

If you want more help with Family Tree type software, or research, just ask.

Answer 2

There may be no coat of arms associated with a particular surname, or there mat be many, due entirely to the fact that there is no such thing as a "family" coat of arms, this is something that has been invented in the USA to sell people stuff they make. Coats of Arms were issued to individuals by the College of Arms, not to families, and upon the individual's death, could be passed on to the eldest son. Only one person at a time is entitled to use the coat of arms.

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 indivuals, not families. The oldest legitimate son inherits it.

Supose Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Richard Smith and Sir Harold Smith all get Coats of Arms in 1512. By 2006 there is just one legitimate eldest son of eldest son of eldest son . . . each, for a total of three men. (Unless someone died before they 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 highest quality at lowest 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 in the country named Smith. 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

Answer 4

try wikipedia.org