Heritage Album

Where would I go to get a free family tree, coat of arms, etc.?

I am almost 75 % irish and I know londonderry ireland is where my fathers family cam from and I would love to know if we had a coat of arms or any family name history. Help please!

Public Comments

1. I'd try a search with your last name + "coat of arms." There are many online resources out there for this purpose, so you should be able to find it if one exists!
2. To start, you need the name of your immigrant ancestor (or earlier), and his date and place of birth. Then go to WorldConnect and type in his name and other information. If you are lucky, you will have a free family tree. The heraldry is harder. It is really easy to be scammed by websites that sell so-called surname family crests. I think the best thing to do is, after you have your family tree, contact the people who created your family tree. Email them to see if there was someone in your male-line who was granted or used a coat of arms.
3. You have asked 2 questions. We get both questions many times daily. QUESTION NO. 1 FAMILY HISTORY - MY ANSWER My answer is lengthy and I apologize for that but I want to warn you of the advantages and the pitfalls of genealogy on the internet. We get your question many time a day. So I have cut and am pasting an answer. Here is a link to various websites, some free, some not. http://www.progenealogists.com/top50genealogy2008.htm Websites that only have family trees are not worth a tinker's curse unless you are willing to verify the information with documents/records. They are subscriber submitted, very seldom documented and if they are they are poorly documented. You frequently will see the different info on the same people from different subscribers. Then you will see the absolute same info on the same people from different subscribers but you would be very foolish if you thought for one moment that that means it is correct. A lot of people copy without verifying. The information can be useful as clues only as to where to get the documentation. Right before Christmas of 2008, I found out I was dead. So was my sister and my brother-in-law. We died in New Jersey. Since the only time my sister and I were ever in New Jersey is when our family drove through it coming from New York in 1957. It was the same year Hurricane Audrey hit in our part of the world. Hey! we had been dead for 51 years. It says so on the internet. It has to be right if it is on the internet! I found out that family on both sides married and died in New Jersey. Since my ancestry is mostly southern American colonial with some exceptions and those exceptions came in through southern ports, I was surprised. This tree would have been accepted by any genealogy website. You can make up an entirely fictitious family tree and it will be accepted. You disagree with something someone has on one of your family members, the websites will tell you that it is between you and the other subscriber. This subscriber had almost 150,000 names in her family tree. There are too many people with trees on the internet that think it is more important to get as many names as possible rather than have a good verifiable family tree. They copy info from other family trees, perhaps on their inlaws. Then they find inlaws of their inlaws and go crazy. One website, genealogy.com use to encourage people to merge other people's family trees into theirs. That is downright sloppy genealogy. Now the best for the total amount of records online isn't free but your public library might have a subscription to it. That is Ancestry.Com. Still be careful about the information in their family tree, particularly their One World Tree program. CyndisList.com is a website with links to many other websites, some free and some not. Many people involved in genealogy find it helpful. Not all records are online but the ones you will find will save you time and money traveling to courthouses, libraries etc. However your first free source is your own family. Get information from them. Tape your senior members if they will let you. People who do this state they go back and listen to the tape again after doing research and hear things they didn't hear the first time around. I am not saying they won't be confused or wrong on some things. Find out if anybody in your family has any old family bibles. Ask to see and make copies of birth, marriage and death certificates. Depending on the religious faith, baptismal, first communion, confirmation and marriage certificates from their church can be helpful. A good free source is a Family History Center at a Latter Day Saints(Mormon) Church. They have records on people all over the world, not just Mormons. In Salt Lake City, they have the world's largest genealogical collection. Their FHCs can order microfilm for you to view at a nominal fee. They won't try to convert you, at least they haven't done so to me or anyone else that I know. Just call the nearest Mormon Church or visit their free website, FamilySearch.org, to get their hours for the general public. Rootsweb and FamilySearch.org are 2 free sites but remember verify information in family trees with documents/records. If you don't you don't know whether it is accurate or not. QUESTION NO. 2 "FAMILY CREST" -MY ANSWER To begin with there really isn't any such thing as a family crest. A crest is merely part of a coat of arms. Coats of arms do not belong to surnames. In Ireland there are clan crests. Every member of a clan can wear it as a belt buckel. Only the chief is allowed to display a the full coat of arms. Many times more than one man with the same surname, not all necessariy related, were granted a coat of arms, all different. No one peddler who sells them on the internet, at shopping malls in airports, will have all of them. They don't need to in order to sell. The only time they will have more than one is if more than one man with the same surname from different national origins were granted one. Then they will have one of each and there might have been others. In England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Northern Ireland they were granted to an individual man, not a family. All sons were eligible to apply and have one granted with some differences. Only the oldest son inherits his father's upon his father's death. To display a coat of arms without documented proof that you are entitled to it is considered usurpation of identity. If you have pride in yourself and your family, you don't want to take on another's identity. See the following links http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/Faq.htm http://www.heraldry.ws/info/article10.html http://www.bothwell.cx/arms.shtml This gives rules re Scottish heraldry The family history that comes with the coats of arms being sold will not be the family history of everyone with that particular surname.