A Roll of Early American Arms

In the American Heraldry Society Forum, Arian Collins announced recently that he (with help from other AHS members Eric Hall, Robert Tucker and Joseph McMillan) has completed the pre-1825 blazons for the AHS's Roll of Early American Arms.  I mention this here not only because my book on The Gore Roll (available at www.appletonstudios.com/BooksandGames.htm) was used as a source (along with such standbys of early American armory as Crozier's General Armory and Virginia Heraldica, Bolton's American Armoury, and Matthew's Complete American Armory & Blue Book), but because it's such a great resource for finding coats of arms as they were used in early America.  The AHS has made this resource available to everyone on their website, at http://www.americanheraldry.org/pages/index.php?n=Main.Roll  I have also added this link to the "Some Good On-Line Armorials and Ordinaries" section in the left-hand column of this blog.

They do note that: "Arms are included in this roll based on actual use as reported in the sources given. We have not attempted to validate the user's right to the arms beyond what is reported in the sources. Names given in italics are those of an immigrant to America whose descendants bore the arms shown. The immigrant himself may not have made use of the arms."

This is a wonderful heraldic resource, and the gentlemen mentioned above deserve to be applauded for the tremendous amount of work that they put into making such a resource available to the rest of the world.