Hamilton Heights High School Library

Heraldry

• House Of Names at http://www.houseofnames.com/ -- This is a commercial site, but it may be useful as you can search by last name and at least get a small bit of history.
• Heraldry on the Internet at http://digiserve.com/heraldry/ -- This is mostly a collection of links, but some may be helpful to you.
• Heraldica at http://www.heraldica.org/ -- More informative than commercial, it has a fairly decent overview of heraldry in general. It has some nice pictures that you can save as well.
• SCA Educational Articles on Heraldry at http://www.sca.org/heraldry/laurel/education.html -- the SCA stands for Society of Creative Anachronism and consists of people who re-enact the middle ages. They are very serious about their heraldry!
• Owl and Mouse Educational Site on Heraldry at http://www.yourchildlearns.com/heraldry.htm -- Many pictures, but somewhat hard to navigate. Feel free to download the "game" (but I couldn't get it to work on XP).
• Burke's Peerage at http://www.burkes-peerage.net/ -- This may not be as helpful to you in this assignment, but it is the "the definitive historical guide to the UK and Ireland's titled and landed families." Who knows, maybe you are related to a Duke or Fifth Earl of Something.
• The American College of Heraldry at http://www.americancollegeofheraldry.org/ -- The registry page contains some nice examples of recently registered (meaning they just made them up) American heraldry. The "Meaning and Influence of Arms" page is a good overview of the purpose of heraldry.
• Want more? Any search engine will give you thousands of hits. Genealogy research (including family crests) is currently a huge business on the Internet.