Is heraldry important in a family history?

Is heraldry important in a family history?

If you're lucky enough to find an ancestor that does bear a coat of arms or comes from a slightly higher rank of society then heraldry becomes all important. Because in many ways it's a fast track back through already established pedigrees. And these various coats of arms allow you to effectively have your own coat of arms. So it's quite prestigious if you can link into a heraldic family but it is much harder to prove mainly because the main heraldic families go back from the 18th century and before and the ones today are very well known about. You've got to prove quite a lot of a gap in terms of time in able to make these connections into well established pedigreed families.