What are some good websites where I can look up different family crests and coats of arms?
Certainly for England it is not correct to say that arms were passed only from eldest son to eldest son. In the first instance the grant of arms was to the male head of a family, each of his sons added their own marks of cadency to those, the family arms ( the second son added a crescent, the third son added a five pointed star and other sons added their appropriate mark) which were then displayed on their shields to distinguish themselves from each other and their father, the sons passed their arms, complete with their own cadences, on to their own sons, who then added a second set of cadences to distinguish themselves from each other, their father, uncles and cousins. When a man died, his eldest son then had the right to bear his father’s arms without the differentiation marks, that son’s children would then add only one set of cadency marks, instead of two, and so on, the brothers of the eldest son continued to use the family arms with their own cadency marks added, which were later
Wendy gave you the most authoritative link there is. Below is a link from the most prestigious genealogical organization in the U. S., The Naitonal Genealogical Society. Also, I am furnishing a links regarding Italian heraldry, Scottish heraldry and Irish heraldry. http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/comconsumerp… http://www.regalis.com/onom.htm http://www.bothwell.cx/arms.shtml http://www.heraldry.ws/info/article10.ht… http://www.genealogytoday.com/columns/re… There is no such thing as a family crest. A crest is part of a coat of arms. Coats of arms do not belong to surnames. Actually, there might be, for instance, 15 different men with the
If you just want to look up some last names and see what pretty pictures someone drew up and put a surname on it, then there are plenty of sites for that. However, the truth is….. Coat of Arms were granted to INDIVIDUALS, not assigned to surnames. Just because someone of your last name MAY have been granted one at some point does not make it yours. Also, it may be that several men of the same surname were granted a coat of arms….each one different…..and maybe none of the men were related to each other. Likewise, it may be that NO ONE of your surname was EVER granted one. In order for you to be able to claim any Coat of Arms you must be able to do the following: 1. research your family tree to see if you have any ancestors that were granted a Coat of Arms. 2. If you do have an ancestor who was granted one, then you can only claim it IF the following is true: The person who rightfully can claim a Coat of Arms that was granted to their ancestor is a male descendant who is the first
