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Vermont State Seal
The Great Seal of Vermont
The first Great Seal of Vermont, designed by Ira Allen and made by Reuben Dean of Windsor in 1778, was accepted by resolution of the General Assembly on February 20, 1779. That seal wore out so a new seal was made in 1821. While this included many of the basic design elements of the original seal, it was distinctly more pictorial, rather than symbolic, in character. Seals in several variations of that second design, which was similar to the State Coat of Arms described elsewhere, were used over the next 115 years. In 1937 a new seal was adopted, this a precise reproduction of the original Ira Allen design. It remains to use today.
While an interpretation of the meaning of the seal's different elements involves some supposition, the row of wooded hills certainly indicate the Green Mountains; the sheaves and cow, agriculture; the wavy lines at the top and bottom, sky and water. Henry Steele Wardner, in his THE BIRTHPLACE OF VERMONT: A HISTORY OF WINDSOR TO 1781, suggested that the four sheaves of grain stood for the four counties in existence in 1777; and that the cow stood on the eastern or more peaceable side of the State, while the spearhead on the western side represented the danger to Vermont at that time from the State of New York.
The Vermont motto on the original seal, "Freedom & Unity," may have been suggested by the desire that Vermonters should be free and united, or more likely, that the individual states should be free, but united. It has been suggested that this motto may have been the verbal source for the Liberty and Union speech of Daniel Webster.
The most dominant feature of the seal is the central pine. The pine trees of that time were noble trees, sometimes looming a hundred feet higher than the other trees around them. The pine was used on pine tree shillings, samplers, platters and other familiar objects. It was the feature of the Pine Tree Flag, representing all New England since 1700. Vermont charters reserved for the use of the State such pines as were suitable for masts for the State's Navy.
The peculiar cutting of the Vermont seal tree shows fourteen
distinct branches, none a leader. It is interesting to examine possible reasons
for this. The national flag adopted in 1777 had focused attention on the number
"thirteen," representing the original thirteen states. Since Vermont felt so
strongly on the subject of admission to the Union that she had marked her coins
"Quarta Decima Stella," or fourteenth star, it is easy to imagine that Ira
Allen picked the New England Pine as a proper symbol for the United States, and
deliberately made it a pine of fourtee.
Info from
Vermont Libraries
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