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Where can I get a birth certificate for my ancestor who was born in Wales?

My surname is Rooney. Where can I get a copy of my family's 'coat of arms'?

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Before you spend your money on a subscription, consider that is now quite a lot of free information available on the web and the following points:

1.  All Family History Centres that have Internet access also have a free subscription to the whole of Ancestry.com, its' sister sites such as Ancestry.co.uk, and genealogy.com.  The centre is not permitted to charge its' patrons a fee to access the Internet or any of the paid subscription websites.  To check what databases are available on Ancestry.com visit this link:

http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/alldblist.asp

2.  There are now 11 new county projects underway, with more coming, that offer free transcripts of church records, tax lists, voters' rolls, directors, census returns and many other records.  If a transcription is not available, a look-up service may be offered.  The projects are referred to as the "OPC" scheme.  Current OPC projects exist for Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, West Somerset, Sussex, Warwickshire, and Wiltshire

3.  Big projects are underway to bring to the web transcriptions and indices to major record collections such as the birth, marriage and death civil registrations, census and parish registers.  In some cases, Ancestry.com actually pulls its' data from those big project sites, particularly FreeBMD.  Accordingly, until Ancestry.com completes its' routine update of its' records, the records posted to FreeBMD will always be more current.  Projects to search are FreeBMD, FreeCen and FreeReg.

4.  Other major transcription projects have been generated by the Federation of Family History Societies and the Society of Genealogists.  Although these projects are not free to access, both offer limited free searching and both offer more reasonable pricing for access than Ancestry.com.  My personal favourite is Family History Online, the site of the FFHS.  The Origins web network is the project of the SOG.

I hope this information helps answer your question.

Where can I get a birth certificate for my ancestor who was born in Wales?
         

All civil registration certificates for events registered in Wales as well as in England - birth, marriage and death events registered as of 1 July 1837 and after - can be obtained from the Office of National Statistics at Kew, Surrey, England.

If you live nearby you can make a trip to the Family Records Centre at 1 Myddleton Street and place your order for your certificate there. You will be required to return after several days to take delivery of your certificate.  If you live in England or Wales you can order the certificate on-line.  However, if you live outside of England or Wales you can fax an application for the certificate to the Office of National Statistics.  Full details and blank application forms can be found on their website at:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/registration/certificates.asp. 

A certificate may also be requested from a local registration office.  Costs of certificates are usually about GB5.50 - a little less expensive than those purchased from the national office.  A link can be found on the website above to a list of local registration offices.  Birth and death certificates ordered from a local registration office generally pose no problems other than having to know close to the approximate date of the event.  Some offices will conduct a more extensive search for higher fees but many of the larger offices have been known to refuse extensive search requests.  Obtaining a marriage certificate through this channel is quite different, however.  Due to the manner in which the marriages were recorded, one has to know the name of the name of the church where the marriage took place, as well as the approximate date.

If you opt to order your certificate through the office at Kew, in order to make your cost somewhat lower, you may wish to first search the General Register Office index of births to obtain the full particulars of the birth registration.  The full particulars will include the full name under which he or she was registered, the registration district, a volume number and a page number.  If you are using the index on microfilm or microfiche you will also have to include the year as well as the quarter of the year during which the birth was registered.

Microfilm and microfiche editions of the G.R.O. index can be rented at a Family History Center from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.  Some Family History Centers may have the index which you require already amongst their indefinite collection.  For example, the St. Catharines, Hamilton and Brantford Family History Centres have some or all of the index available on-site.   Alternatively, you may wish to try a search for the birth registration on the FreeBMD website at

http://freebmd.rootsweb.com/.

Please bear in mind, though, that the FreeBMD index is not 100% transcribed as yet for all events.  So do not be disappointed if you are unable to find the registration on-line.  The FreeBMD site will provide you with the particulars from the G.R.O. index that you will require in order to purchase a less costly certificate.

As it sounds that you are fairly new to this type of research, I would not advise that you attempt a search on the 1837online website.  You should first gain some practical experience using the microfilm or microfiche index first.  For further information about the 1837online website I would direct you to my website review.

My surname is Rooney. Where can I get a copy of my family's 'coat of arms'?
         

Thank you for your enquiry concerning the Rooney armorial bearings.  I would be terribly remiss in my duties as a professional genealogist if I led you down the path and provided you with any arms pertaining to any family for which those arms had not been matriculated.

Most members of the public at large are not aware of the fact that arms are granted to one particular individual.  They are not granted to all individuals who happen to bear a particular surname.  In short, unless one of your direct-line ancestors had been given a grant of arms (with or without crest and/or motto) AND that grant stipulated in its terms that the right to bear arms was heritable in perpetuity, i.e. to be passed through to each descendant in each line of the original grantee's children, then, unfortunately, there would be no entitlement to you to display an achievement of arms. 

Moreover, arms are granted by different bodies in different countries.  Accordingly, one would also have to know in which country the arms had been matriculated:  in Scotland it is the responsibility of the Lord Lyon;  in England and Wales, the responsibility rests with King of Arms at the College of Arms

http://www.college-of-arms.gov.uk ;  in Ireland the task falls to the Chief Herald's Office and so on.  Contact with each of these offices would result, first, in a search of their files for a grant.  Be warned, though, that the fees for searches are very steep.  For example, a recent search on behalf of one of my clients started at GB200.00 - approximately Cdn$500.00.  The process is complicated and protracted and the results may be far less than anticipated.

If your interest is to determine how many families bearing the surname of Rooney have been granted arms with a view to researching the descendants of those families in an effort to possibly overcome a lineage roadblock in your own research, then there are quite a few sources in which you might wish to look.  Most of the following books can be found at a good reference library, i.e. university libraries, Toronto Reference Library (Yonge Street), St. Catharines Centennial Library, et cetera:

• The General Armoury


• Fairbairn's Crests


• The Genealogists' Guide, by Marshall - a bibliography that will point you to other sources that may contain pedigrees and arms.


• An index to the Pedigrees and Arms contained in the Herald's Visitations and other genealogical transcripts in the British Museum, by R. Sims. England, London:  J. R. Smith, 1849.  Pedigrees and Arms are also searchable on-line at the British Library at
  http://www.bl.uk/.
  This, too, is a bibliography that will point you to other sources that may contain pedigrees and arms.


• Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, serial publication also now searchable on-line at
  http://www.burkes-peerage.net
    These usually include a drawing of the grant which may or may not be included on-line.


• Burke's Landed Gentry, serial publication, first issue 1849.  These usually include a drawing of the grant.


• Burke's Extinct Peerage, issued occasionally.  These usually include a drawing of the grant.


• Herald's Visitations  Some of the 1619 visitation of England is searchable on-line at uk-genealogy.org.

European sources should also be looked at such as the Armourial Generale, which can also be found in the larger libraries.   Do not confuse this latter book with The General Armoury.  The General Armoury is a narrative book.  The Armourial Generale is a very large format book with plates of the arms that have been granted throughout Europe.

Although I can appreciate that this response is not the one you were hoping for, I do hope that I have been able to enlighten you on the subject of heraldry, even in a small way.