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Position:Home>Genealogy> Can anyone help me find a website that sells one family crest for several differ


Question:i'm doing research on family crests and I need to prove that these fake gimicky websites actually do in fact supply fake family crests; for example when they use one family crest for ten different surnames...please help!


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: i'm doing research on family crests and I need to prove that these fake gimicky websites actually do in fact supply fake family crests; for example when they use one family crest for ten different surnames...please help!

See the links below one from the British College of Arms, the other from the most prestigious genealogical organizaton in the U.S., The National Genealogical Society, one regarding Italian heraldry and the other regarding Irish heraldry.

http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk/Faq.ht...

http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/comconsumerp...

http://www.regalis.com/onom.htm

http://www.heraldry.ws/info/article10.ht...

Actually, there might have been 15 different individuals with the same surname each granted their own coat of arms. The peddlers that sell them are not going to have all 15. Bellieve me they don't need to in order to sell to gullible people. If the same surname crosses national boundaries,and some do, they might have one for each nation where someone with the same surname was granted one. However, for instance in England, there might have been 10 different individual with the same surname that were each granted their own.

House of Names has the following disclaimer in fine print on its page:

"We encourage you to study the ________
genealogy to find out if you descend from someone who bore a particular family crest. . . . . . . . .No families, not even royal houses, can make sound claim to the right to bear arms unless a proven connection is established through attested genealogical records."





There are no laws in the U.S. regarding heraldry and those companies take advantage of Americans. In some countries a person would risk prosecution for displaying a coat of arms without documented proof that they are entitled to it.

If a person is really entitled to a coat of arms, it would have been left to them by their father. They wouldn't have to buy it.

Now a peson might have numerous coats of arms in their family tree. That doesn't mean they are entitled to any one of them.
It just means that after doing research they find various ancestors that were granted a coat of arms, and if they have a book on their family tree printed or even published, it would be legitimate for them to put a picture of their ancestors coats of arms in their book. However, it would not be legitimate of them to book in their book, those that just happened to have the same surnames as their ancestors.

If a person is an American and they have any English lines that goes back to early colonial days in the American South, they have an excellent opportunity of finding several in their family tree. Actually, some in the South have the ones their ancestors brought over from England 300-400 years ago. They aren't those dinky little walnut plaques that silly people have on their den walls or over their fireplace. They usually don't display them. They have them stuck away in their attic or a closet. Afterall, they can't buy groceries with them.

They are not fake that way. They are fake because not everyone named, for instance, "Carpenter" has the same coat of arms. C of A, and Crests, are given to individuals, not families. So, the fraudsters will sell the same C of A to many different families as their "Family" crest/CofA.

Your Carpenters may have come from Shropshire, mine from Bavaria (where they were "Zimmerman", which means "Carpenter" in German.) Mine changed the spelling a little, yours didn't, but hey - that's our "Family" coat of arms, with a saw, hammer and plane on a blaze argent with bar sinister.

www.houseofnames.com
is the biggest and most popular CofA merchant I know of.

First off, it is coat-of-arms, not crests. Crests, when they exist, are a part of the coat-of-arms.

While there might be fake gimicky sites that just make up coat-of-arms, that isn't the principal problem.

On most, if you try to find a coat-of-arms for say "Smith", they will certainly sell you one - and unless you stumble upon the disclaimer page (usually accessible by clicking on 2-point
text on page 3 of the ordering process), they are doing everything they can to present this as the SMITH FAMILY Coat-of-Arms. No such a thing - and the disclaimer page, if you can find it, will tell you that.

So it isn't a fake coat-of-arms. Most likely it is a coat-of-arms granted to someone at some point who happened to have the surname Smith. But why that one instead of any of the other 12 (Smith has a lot).

So it isn't that the coat-of-arms is fake, it is that they are presenting it as the BUYER'S family coat-of-arms because they happen to have the same surname as the person granted the coat-of-arms.

Addendum - Darn Ted, you type too fast. You got that in while I was writing. But that's good! That means you will probably get all the thumbs down from the people who have spent $20+ for the simulated walnut plaque they have handsomely displayed in their den.

ok i will try

All of you responded quite well! Cheers! Shirley, you gave the best sites!

Had to come down hard on one of my sons, years ago, who had been approached by one of the companies, told him just what I thought about the manner of solicitation. He didn't purchase.