During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the wholesale assumption of arms reached huge proportions. Most persons took them without the shadow of a claim. Some Americans then believed, and some still do, that the bearing of a surname the same as an armigerous famlly entitles them to use the same arms. I repeat, that a coat-of-arms belongs only to the person to whom it was granted, and to those who can prove direct descent, through the direct line, from that person. Because of American interest in heraldry, the New England Historic Genealogical Society, of Boston, has created a Committee on Heraldry. It is the function of this Committee to investigate and establish the right to certain American families to bear arms and it has published a roll of authentic coats-of-arms. It must, however, be borne in mind that such registration has no legal effect, or any meaning other than that, in the opinion of the Committee, such arms are rightfully used by certain families. The Committee accepts all coats where descent is proved from a grantee of arms or from a family that has used them from mediaeval times. It also accepts arms where it can be proved that the first comer to this country used them; but if it be shown that such user was without right, the arms are removed from the list.

This Committee is as close as we can come on this side of the ocean to anything like the English College of Arms.

I could spend several hours discussing common misconceptions regarding heraldry, such as the ridiculous explanations of the meanings of the charges but perhaps what I have said thus far is sufficient for our present project in discouragement.

The moral underlying all my observations thus far, I think, is that genealogical research is far more than copying.

We cannot blindly copy royal ancestral lines because somewhere in a pedigree we come across our surname; and we cannot blindly copy a coat-of-arms because we like the color and the design and the original owner happened to bear our name. And, of course, we cannot possibly compile an accurate family history by the simple act of examining printed books and copying from them whatever materials seem to bear on our supposed family. Genealogy compiled solely from such sources does not deserve the name, yet some self-styled genealogists boast of their success by this means. What is even more unfortunate, their work is frequently printed and is thereby placed within reach of other inexperienced and uncritical workers.

It must continually be born in mind by every worker in the field, that no one book, nor, indeed, all the books ever printed, cover all the circumstances surrounding even one member of a family. The searcher must go to original source materials, such as church records, land records, wills, deeds, census records, town records, county court records, probate records, and also to the vital records of the towns concerned in the search.

The use of such records was touched upon in my earlier paper read before this group, and there are so many excellent guides to their use - Gilbert H. Doane, Donald L. Jacobus, and Henry R. Stiles among them -that there is no need to develop the subject here. What I do wish to emphasize is the training and skill required in their use.

Many of these original records exist only in manuscripts, frequently in a seventeenth - or eighteenth - century hand. Special training and practice are needed to decipher such writing, and even skilled persons frequently make mistakes in copying.