A Big Heraldry Project Completed

I have posted the following announcement on the Facebook pages of several of the heraldry societies to which I belong, but in case you are reading this here and have not seen it on Facebook, here it is:

Finally! At long last, it is done! Nearly three years ago I began to collect into a single document personal heraldry (coats of arms and crests) as used in what is now the United States of America, from a number of different collections. I did this because I sometimes found myself having to look through three, four, five or more different books (some .pdf, some hard copy) when trying to research a coat of arms used here, and I wanted be able to have a handy single source to do this research. I think it's finally ready for use, and consists of 9,990 separate entries.

Now that it is completed, I can share my work with others who may also find it useful, without having to recreate it from scratch.

I have uploaded two .zip files to my website, Appleton Studios. One contains a .docx and a .xlsx file: the first is an explanatory document giving the collection's rationale, with an explanation of my attempt to make the blazons consistent, along with a bibliography of the sources I've used and a key to those sources (so read this document first!); the second is the actual collection with surname, blazon of the arms, blazon of the crest (if given in the source), and the source of each. This .zip file can be downloaded directly from the Appleton Studios website at http://www.appletonstudios.com/American Heraldry Collection (xlsx version).zip.

Because I know that not everyone can open Microsoft's .docx and .xlsx files, I have also saved each file as a .doc and .xls file. The .xls may be slightly more limited in how it can be manipulated, but contains all of the same data, and really, that's what's important, right? The zipped .doc and .xls files can be downloaded at http://www.appletonstudios.com/American Heraldry Collection (xls version).zip.

Both files can also be downloaded from links on the "What's New" page (http://www.appletonstudios.com/whatsnew.htm) and the "Free Stuff" page (http://www.appletonstudios.com/freestuff.htm) on the website.

If you find these files useful, great! If you find an error (or errors; I don't claim to have caught every single typo or other mistake (as I often say, "I am a prefect tpyist; I never make mistrakes"), though I have tried very hard to find and fix them), please email me and let me know so I can correct it (or them) and upload the corrected files. And, of course, if you find another source which blazons personal arms used in the United States that is not included in this collection, let me know about that, too, so they can be added and the collection updated.