RE: Coats of Arms In the UK the crest was handed down to the next lord in the family (House of Lords). The government had "heralds" whose job it was to travel the country and certify that the current individual using the crest was in truth the proper lord. If you can tie into one of the family trees that they used you have found a gold mine. (I seem to have lost the URL for the book of family trees.) BTW, this implies correctly that there is no such thing as a "Family Coat of Arms" but rather it belongs to the current lord. See http://www.heraldry-scotland.co.uk/beginners.html As far a German family coats of arms, a similar thing holds true. Unlike the English and Scots who cherished their coats of arms and passed them down to signify the head of the family, the German coats of arms were only for a single individual. Crests (Wappen) are used in Germany to signify offices, guilds, villages, regions, and etc not families. Be that as it may, I will cherish my "HELD Family Coat of Arms" that I got from a street vendor knowing full well that it is a farce. At least it looks good on the wall. At 09:00 AM 2/8/2006, you wrote: >From: "S. H. Silverman" <tullycross2@comcast.net> >To: PAWESTMO-L@rootsweb.com >Subject: Boucher's Westmoreland History(Wise & Williams) > >Hello, > >I have two families listed in Boucher's History of Westmoreland and >there are Coats of Arms shown with these two families. The families >are Henry Wise and Nathan Williams,they are associated with the >write up about Thomas Donohoe's wife, Cecelia Wise Donohue on Page >569 of the Biographical section. I encountered these items early in >my research. I did not think they were relevant. > >If any one has a copy of the Boucher book, would you be kind enough >to browse through it and see if Coats of Arms are frequently >displayed in the book, and if so, what families? Names with >British/Irish/Scots descent or German or other European descent? > >Cecelia Wise's grandfather, Henry Wise was a Silversmith. I had >ignored the Coats of Arms as meaningless, but it occurred to me that >since Cecelia Wise Donohoe's grandfather was a Silversmith who would >have apprenticed at the time Coats of Arms were inscribed as >identification on silver pieces during the Colonial period, that >perhaps he did have his own Coat of Arms, and this may be an idea to pursue. > >If any one has researched the Henry Wise family and the Nathan >Williams family I would be interested in communicating with you. > >Thanks, >Shirley