THE MCGOVERN COAT OF ARMS AND CREST

There have been heraldry books published, in the United States at least, that have erroneously depicted the McGovern Coat of Arms as a large tree with a smaller version of that same tree as crest. Many librarians, dedicated to authenticity have since removed that book which has led many other Irish family genealogy searchers astray. 

I have accepted Mac Lysaught's version of the McGovern Coat of Arms, the Lion with the three Crescents, while morning the equation in his book of the lack of "fame" of recent McGoverns. 

Having toiled in the news media for most of my life and known and observed many who have attained "high" fame, I can assured you that their notoriety has nothing to do with their contribution to the human race, but often, quite the contrary, turning into justified incarceration. 

It is a matter of semantics, but historians too often blur the difference between notoriety, infamy and fame, being removed from the daily scene as they are and caught up with notoriety as a measure of human worth to mankind and which history should record. Hitler, Genghis Khan and Stalin were notorious but hopefully not a measure of things to whom the human race should look up to. Infamous, perhaps, but not famous. Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Buddha and others of their kind are rightly famous. 

And as our candid President and student of history Harry Truman once observed, the only history is the history we don't know, made by many persons, probably Great, unobserved by the historians eye and pen who only too often give notice to those who make news by making a great fuss, killing a lot of good people and destroying a lot of good human endeavor. 

As to the McGovern Crest, many Irish Coats of Arms do not have a Crest, but apparently the McGoverns did have one, and it was not a knight's helmet as has been depicted by some ~ but an ancient sailing ship. 

My authority on that is James Fairbairns "Crests of Great Britain and Ireland of the Leading Families" which was first published in 1859 and reprinted many times since. 

The most recent printed (1983) is by Genealogical Publications of Baltimore, revised by Lawrence Butter and edited by Josph MacLaren. It is the recommended source in this field to librarians worldwide by Eugene Sheehy in his Guide to Reference Books.

Page 5