I need a picture of the braniff family shield or crest?

Question:

I need a picture of the braniff family shield or crest?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: A crest is 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 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 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" Crests and Coats of arms. 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.

If you are truly entitled to a C of A, you are probably living in Europe and it is engraved in the stone above the mantle of the family country home. If not, take your pick from the web sites; they are all equaly false for you, and you might as well pick one whose colors you like.

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