Family crest? Coat of arms?

Question

Alright so I am looking for my family coat or arms / crest.

I know that our last name was changed from smallcorn, to what it is now, just plain Small. So im looking around and all i can find is stupid sites that want you to go buy fourty different things from their site that cost alot of money when all i want is to try to find and see if that side of my family has anything like a coat or arms or crest... ^^;; help?

Answer 1

I’m sorry to tell you this, but you do not have a Coat of Arms.  Coat of Arms were granted to INDIVIDUALS, not assigned to surnames. Just because someone of your last name MAY have been granted one at some point does not make it yours.  Also, it may be that several men of the same surname were granted a coat of arms....each one different.....and maybe none of the men were related to each other.  Likewise, it may be that NO ONE of your surname was ever granted one.  In order for you to be able to claim any Coat of Arms you must be able to do the following:

1. research your family tree to see if you have any ancestors that were granted a Coat of Arms.

2. If you do have an ancestor who was granted one, then you can only claim it IF the following is true: The person who rightfully can claim a Coat of Arms that was granted to their ancestor is a male descendant who is the first born son, of the first born son, of the first born son, of the first born son, etc., all the way back to the person who was originally granted the Coat of Arms. If you do not fall in that line, then you cannot claim it.  If you do fall in that line, then chances are you are already aware you have one.

To use a Coat of Arms based on your last name is meaningless.  It is about as accurate as buying a picture frame at the store that has a piece of paper in it showing an image of a child holding a flower and claiming that is actually a picture of your child.

Answer 2

Generally a family cannot have a crest  unless they have a coat of arms.

The crest was normally an ornament on a helmet, and was included within the families achievement (coat of arms) but later became used separately by a family, as decoration on cutlery and plate, statonery, etc.

If you can access a copy of Burke's General Armory of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, first published in 1842. You can find out if any particular family was ever granted arms, or The College of Arms, in Queen Victoria Street, London EC4 might be able to help.

It is not correct to say that arms were only passed from eldest son to eldest son, in the first instance the award of arms was to the head of a family,  (in general way before surnames existed)  each of his sons added their own marks of cadency to those arms, which were then displayed on their shields to distinguish themselves from each other and their father, those sons passed their family arms with their own cadences added on to each of their sons, who then added a second set of cadences to distinguish themselves from each other and their father and uncles and cousins.

When a man died, his eldest son then had the right to bear his father's arms, without the differenciation marks, that son's children would then add only one set of cadency marks, instead of two, and so on, but the brothers of the eldest son continued to use the family arms with their own cadency, which was later passed in the same way to their sons, It got very complicated. The whole family, including in certain circumstances, daughters, were entitled to bear those arms, so in theory if you can prove direct descent you may also be entitled, unfortunately, it is a fact that very, very, few people, other than an extremely well documented line of royalty or gentry, can prove a satisfactory link back to that period.

NOTE : Other than, maybe, out of interest, have nothing to do with sites offering to sell "family histories" and coats of arms to suit, they are just money making concerns who sell to the gullible.

Answer 3

Here are some interesting sites.  I've been doing a lot of genealogy research and finding crests, etc. for my husbands Irish/Scottish family and thought I'd be able to find a lot information for you.    Smallcorn and Small give the search engines a field day!

Take a look a these, even though they are not specifically what you asked for:

http://www.heraldry.ws/index.html

http://www.rootsweb.com/~meharpsw/sm-coa...

(This has information and graphic of your Small family crest.)

http://www.lyon-court.com/lordlyon/CCC_F... (If your family came from Scotland)

EDIT: The Small 'family crest' is what you are looking for.  Shirley T and Violet are ABSOLUTELY CORRECT in their responses, but I think it is wonderful people are searching for their roots.

The genealogy search is hard and arduous, frought with deadends and brickwalls.  "(non-)Family Crests" and "Coats of Arms" are colorful elements filled with symbols that denote the times and trials of our ancestors...and it is no wonder we'd like to claim one for our own.

Perhaps we need a new type of 'heraldry' less associated with the aristocrats.

CALL TO GRAPHIC DESIGNERS: a movement to create Family Crests...for the 'little people'. (Since, technically, family crests do not exist....yet!)

Answer 4

There is no such thing as a family crest.

A crest is a part of a coat of arms.

Coats of arms do not belong to surnames. They were and are granted to individuals and are passed down to direct male line descendants.   Actually there might have been, for instance, 15 different men with the same surname, not all necessarily related, each granted their own coat of arms, all different.

The peddlers that sell them on the internet, at airports, at shopping mall, in magazines and solicit by direct mail won't have all of them.   They don't need to in order to sell to gullible people.  Now if persons with the same surname from more than one nation origin were granted one, they will show one for each, but there might have been 5 for each.

If this is a school assignment, just print off any you see.  However, also print off the links I am furnishing you and give them to your teacher.  We have a lot of students given an assignment like this.  One of the links is from the British College of Arms(they grant coats of arms) and the other from the  most prestigious genealogical organization in the U. S., The National Genealogical Society.  You also have my permission to print off what I am posting here and give to your teacher.

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

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

Now it is possible for a person to have more than one in their family tree.  That doesn't mean they are entitled to any one of them.  It just means that if after doing research they find different ancestors that were granted coats of arms, it is quite legitimate for them to put a picture of their ancestors coats of arms in any book they have printed or published.  However, it would not be valid if they put in their book, ones that just happened to be granted to someone with the same surnames of their ancestors.

For Americans, if 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 one their ancestor 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, as a rule, don't display them.  They aren't any good for buying groceries, and Walmart, Target etc won't take them as a credit card.