Flag of Vermont

How to read it

The flag law, 1 V.S.A. § 495, says only that the flag “shall be blue with the Coat of Arms of the State thereon”, with no proportions or shades. The arms (§ 491) are a green landscape filling half the shield, high blue mountains to either side behind it and a yellow sky; a pine tree of natural colour rising from near the base almost to the top; three yellow sheaves set diagonally on the right side and a red cow standing on the left. Right and left are the bearer’s, as heraldry describes them, so the sheaves appear on the viewer’s left. On a scroll beneath the shield is the motto, “Vermont; Freedom and Unity”; two crossed pine branches, the Vermonter’s badge, lie between shield and scroll; and the crest is a buck’s head of natural colour on a blue and yellow scroll. The General Assembly passed the present flag on March 26, 1923, effective June 1, the Vermont Historical Society says. The motto is also Vermont’s state motto.

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Why Vermont changed its flag in 1923

Vermont’s first flag, a militia flag of October 31, 1803, had 17 stripes and 17 stars with the word VERMONT above them. The second, authorized on October 20, 1837, had 13 red and white stripes and a single large white star on blue holding the coat of arms. It was hardly ever used; when a change was discussed, only a few could be found. “It can scarcely be distinguished from Old Glory,” a newspaper columnist wrote; “hanging limp from the shaft the two appear exactly alike.” Vermont regiments had carried the coat of arms on a blue field from the Civil War to the First World War, and governors had used the same flag by custom, so in 1923 the legislature passed H.63, making it the state flag.

The dates differ inside the Secretary of State’s own manual. Its history of the flag, condensed from an article by Adjutant General Herbert T. Johnson in the 1951 manual, says “No. 8 of the Acts of 1919” approved the design; its table of state emblems gives 1923, as the Vermont Historical Society does.

The pine tree’s 14 branches

The pine on Ira Allen’s state seal has 14 distinct branches, none a leader. Vermont, eager to join the Union, had stamped its coins “Quarta Decima Stella”, the fourteenth star, and the State Manual suggests Allen meant the 14 branches to show that Vermont should be a member of the Union. The Vermont Historical Society says the 14 branches stand for Vermont’s place as the 14th state. The crossed pine branches under the shield are said to stand for the pine sprigs Vermonters wore at the Battle of Plattsburgh in 1814.

Telling it from Maine’s flag

Both are blue with a pine tree in the arms. Maine’s flag has a farmer and a seaman holding up the shield, a moose lying under the pine and the North Star above. Vermont’s has no people: the pine stands in a landscape with a cow and sheaves of wheat, and a buck’s head is above.