Genealogy

Each month we highlight one of our most popular eResources on our homepage. For April, we are highlighting our Genealogy eResources - Fold3, Heritage Quest, Newspaper Archive, and Ancestry. For those unfamiliar with these eResources, Ancestry Library Edition has most of the features of the subscription version of Ancestry.com - you can search records, including international records, download charts and forms, send documents to your email address - except for personalized functionality and access to a couple of Ancestry's online research collections. Heritage Quest gives you access to PERSI (Periodical Source Index) and Freedman's Bank records, among other features. Fold3 includes Native American Archives. Genealogists looking for online access to large-scale maps of towns and cities in the United States, for the time period 1867-1970, might also use the Digital Sanborn Maps eResource; the American Ancestors eResource, a collection of databases for the New England states, is available only at the Main Library. Please note that Newspaper Archive only searches New Mexico newspapers. Explore these databases on your own with your valid library card and PIN (you must access them via the library homepage to get free access), or visit our Genealogy Center for more information!

From our homepage, you can head over to our Genealogy LibGuide just by clicking on the Genealogy heading! This will show you all the resources our Genealogy Center has to offer.

The front page of the guide includes upcoming programs, recommended books, information about our Genealogy Center (all ABC Library's genealogy materials are housed on the second floor of Main Library), and links to local genealogical societies. The How To Begin tab includes handy tips and even a printable ancestor chart! Other informational tabs include Obituaries, Census Research, Microfilm, and Researching New Mexico Families.

Genealogy Research Day is April 29, the last Tuesday of April!  Come anytime between 10:30 am and 3:30 pm and get individual help from expert volunteers from the Albuquerque Genealogical Society.  They're happy to help beginners or experts and can provide assistance on special interest areas and locations, DAR applications and research, Internet research assistance (the Genealogy Center has a dedicated computer lab), and more. Bring your charts and questions!

Would your group like a tour of the Genealogy Center or an overview at your next meeting of the available resources?  Contact us (see Hours and Location on the Genealogy LibGuide for contact information) and we can schedule a tour at the Genealogy Center or come to you with a half hour presentation about the many resources available at the Genealogy Center to support family history research.

Game of Thrones & Heraldry

From A Wiki of Ice and Fire. Permission was granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
 

If you've read any of George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, or been watching Game of Thrones on HBO, you'll know that all the Great Houses of Westeros (the Seven Kingdoms) have their own sigil. Merriam-Webster defines a sigil as a seal, signet, or a sign, word, or device held to have occult power in astrology or magic, and heraldry as the practice of devising, blazoning, and granting armorial insignia and of tracing and recording genealogies, which is close enough for our purposes.

In Game of Thrones, some of the most vivid heraldic examples include House Stark, with their direwolf and family motto "Winter is Coming" on an escutcheon (see above) and the arms of Joffrey Baratheon, which marshal (or combine) the coats of arms of both his parents' houses (the Baratheon stag and Lannister lion) on one shield.  But real world heraldic rules are not strictly followed in the Seven Kingdoms.

With the help of an online generator (see above), you can make your own Game of Thrones inspired sigil in a kind of trading card format. Pretty, but why not use library resources to make your own heraldic device? The study of heraldry is ancient and intricate, and well worth a little extra effort to make yourself a really impressive insignia.  Here are a couple of titles to get you started:

The Complete Book of Heraldry by Stephen Slater

The Heraldic Art Source Book by Peter Spurrier

The Oxford Guide to Heraldry by Thomas Woodcock and John Martin Robinson

Basic Heraldry by Stephen Friar and John Ferguson

Design Your Own Coat of Arms: An Introduction to Heraldry by Rosemary A. Chorzempa


For younger readers interested in heraldry:

Harold the Herald: A Book about Heraldry by Dana Fradon

Knight by Christopher Gravett


Some more specific studies of heraldry are only available to browse at the Genealogy section on the second floor of Main Library.


Links

Join the Realm Sigil Creator

A Wiki of Ice and Fire: Heraldry