"Thank you" for your time and efforts in educating me on frauds of family crests. I agree with what you have said. I, too, enjoy genealogy...I must take after my German-Polish father and my English-Irish mother, both sides having recorded family records from many generations back. My parents had no desire to ever sit in front of a computer until a couple weeks ago when I showed them the many genealogy web sites we have at our finger tips and at our disposal. Now both sides of my family can't wait for me to see what additional info I can find for them.....so far I had only worked on my husbands Sicilian/Italian family, the VIVONAs and the GRECOs. I just started on my research in January, since then I have found info that my husbands family did not know such as the Great-Grandmother and her daughters that came thru Ellis Island....I have every birth, marriage and death certificate of every person from my daughter Emilia to the Great-Grandfather Rosario,1856, so to request the duel citizenship for my daughter to live her life in Italy after marriage there. I have never worked so intently a! nd so long at anything in my life and had more fun doing so! My in-laws weep with joy at every old record I find and show them. I have met more kind and helpful people on line that I LOVE than at church! As weird as it sounds, it is as if all of my family ancestors at times are leading me to my roots (and my daughters)....it is just too weird, that both my husband and I just knew we were to name our daughter Emilia and that she would someday marry and live in the region of EMILIA-Romagna...and that Emilia would grow up from a very early age yearning to draw ITALY and from middle school on through high school go to Italy on school trips and constantly be taken as an Italian by the people from there( in Napoli, she was stopped more than once by the locals and said you look like one of us???? She would always say " my paternal Grandmother was from here!"....then to meet an Italian Air Force pilot in OKLAHOMA...to then become engaged to now be planning to live her future lif! e in Italy , does feel like destiny leading us! My joys are very real and tangible, too, as I hold the great-great grandparents marriage application for license that not a single aged relative had ever seen...every spare dime has been spent in obtaining these old records. As I am working with the Italian Embassy in Houston and have been asked to get an APOSTILLE on every record I have just obtained which means sending each record back to the state that it originated from and requesting that States Secretary to declare it valid and to place that States seal on it...costing $10.00-$25.00 per certificate...I now have as of today every document needed to request duel citizenship for my husband and daughter as my husband's great-Grandfather never requested or gained citizenship in the US. So....I have no money to blow... as you suggested...(and I do give to the needy whenever I can... and I have 3 in college...sometimes I am the needy one! I am the mom with the holey socks....(smile). I love your idea of creating our own family crest...and since Emilia is a college degree commercial artist and sales her ITALIAN art professionally, what a great thing for the two of us to work on together while in Italy next week! I wish I had heard about the CREST Fraud before I had wasted my money, but maybe thru my naivety others now be aware of it. On other Lists, we, the new ones to genealogy, call you and the others , the" WISE Ones"....I, "thank you" for all you know and teach to beginners like myself! Ciao! to you all...wish me luck and a prayer for our safe trip to Italy....I will miss, you ,that teach me! God bless you all. Sincerely, Deb V.Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com

Congratulations Deborah on your search and documents. I obtained my dual citizenship and also for my wife. She and I will be moving into our condo with a view of the Royal Palace in Caserta, Italy. A few miles away is the town of Maddaloni, a small town where my grandparents were born and married. Maddaloni is also where my father and my birth records are recorded in their city hall. My grandfather failed to obtain US citizenship also. I know about the cost, but New York is less expensive, except for the many offices and municipal archives that we have to go through. Especially when I live in the State of Washington on the Pacific coast. I also had to send all the paperwork from Italy and New York to the Consular office in San Francisco. But it was worth it. Getting off the plane in Italy, we show our Italian passport to the EU custom's desk with the other 6 or 7 EU citizens and are waved thru. The other American passengers have to line up 200 plus and show their American passports to the Italian customs desk. But a word of caution. Coming back to America use the US passport or they will require you to show a Green card before boarding. Speaking about the Crests, I did purchase one in a Mall outside the city of Milano. It was written completely in Italian, but gave almost the same information as the one I obtained from Halberts, in Ohio almost 30 years ago. While stationed in Taiwan, ROC, I had the crest put to canvas and hung in my home for years. While I was in Italy, I showed the paper copy of the family crest that I had purchase in Milano to my cousin in Naples. He is very, very wealthy. He told me that every time someone address him as Count he will give that person 50 lira. I would have done it but it would have taken me all day to get enough lira to amount to $5.00 US. Mike Setaro