6 replies to this topic

[Brother Zee]

Where can I learn about my family crest and or family heritage online

[Blueblood]

http://www.2020site.org/heraldry/

http://www.ancestorhunt.com/family-coat-of-arms.htm

http://www.daddezio.com/genealogy/heraldry/index.html

[TakkunEG]

Be warned about the family crest sites: most of them aren't actual crests, and more than likely have nothing to do with your family. Those take a surname based on the country/region it comes from and the occupational contexts of that name, then generate a simulated crest/coat of arms based on elements in existing crests for specific families. Sort of a mix-n-match approach. Don't even ask me where they come up with the "family motto" part, as it seems to have no basis in any kind of fact either. Those places are good for learning about the origin of your surname, but nothing you can't get on Wikipedia either (most of the time). I would stay away from ordering any of their "customized" family crest products. Take a screenshot of the crest image if you like it.

If you're interested in researching individuals in your actual family tree, your best bets are to use Ancestry.com (you can get a little for free and a buttload for a small monthly fee), asking and searching the GenForums at Genealogy.com, and the Ancestry World Trees, which are user-contributed (you might meet some new cousins). Random Googling of names can sometimes work too. FindAGrave.com is good if you know where people are buried, but also know that it's all volunteer contributions. If nobody gathered info for that cemetery, it's not there.

These are your best bets...I would know, I've spent the last three weeks buried in them.

If you're searching anywhere in Texas by chance, PM me and I can give you several great links. Texans are very gung-ho about their genealogy, and the state provides great public access to a lot of vital statistics through volunteers.

[itsallblack]

My family name means bird, imbecile and some kind of Vegtable .D'OH Damn and crap.

[Jo_Pierce]

Holy Guacamole, Takk! Good work!

Just another FYI - the best source of genealogy info, if you can get access, is the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons). They have excellent record keeping on genealogy - mainly for religious purposes. But it also includes families who are not Mormons.


Ok. Riding the tangent express, here...

[TakkunEG]

The LDS collection is excellent, so I hear. I haven't actually made use of it yet, but a distant cousin on my mom's side who helped us with some of our ancestry lines has had good experience with them.

[Scott]

My uncle went to Salt Lake City just to access the LDS collection without having to pay shipping costs on microfilm. He found a lot of information about our family in the States, none of whom are Mormon. From what I understand, genealogical research is an important part of their religion. If your family has been in the United States for many generations, you will be able to go very far with it. In my situation, I am a first generation Canadian; my parents were both born in the Netherlands. To research our ancestry, my uncle has made several trips to the Netherlands to study at the CBG (central bureau for genealogy) and at the various old churches where our ancestors attended. Churches were keeping records long before the governments started keeping records.

Those family crest sites are indeed bad news bears. Quite often we get spam in the snail mail from companies like that telling us about our imaginary great-great-grandfather Edward who sailed to Canada in 1674 and here is his family crest! That's nice, but my grandfather John came to Canada in 1949 and I already have the family crest; it looked nothing alike. I have family crests for three of my grandparents; the fourth remains extremely elusive and perhaps may not exist. (Not everybody had one.)

A small bit of advice: know that a family crest (aka coat of arms) belongs to a particular person, not an entire family. I got flamed a few times by "experts" for asking about a familiy crest for a particular surname. The coat of arms is supposed to change slightly as it is passed down. When a couple gets married, an element from the bride's fathers coat of arms is added to the groom's fathers coat of arms to create a coat of arms for the groom. On my Dad's side, the coat of arms for both the paternal and maternal ancestral lines each have three different symbols. On my Mom's side, the coat of arms on her maternal ancestral line has only a single symbol.