Delaware state symbols

How to read it

Title 29, chapter 3 of the Delaware Code names all four. The peach blossom is the oldest, adopted as the state’s floral emblem on May 9, 1895, when Delaware’s orchards held more than 800,000 peach trees and the state was known as the “Peach State”. The blue hen chicken followed on April 14, 1939 and the American holly (Ilex opaca) on May 1, 1939. The motto is part of the Great Seal, engraved on it with the dates 1704, 1776 and 1787; the State of Delaware says it was derived from the Order of Cincinnati and was approved in 1847. “The First State” became the official nickname on May 23, 2002, because Delaware was the first of the 13 original states to ratify the US Constitution, on December 7, 1787.

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Delaware’s symbols and when each was adopted

A chicken, not a wild bird

The blue hen is a chicken. The State of Delaware traces it to the Revolutionary War: the men of Captain Jonathan Caldwell’s company, raised in Kent County, took game chickens said to be of the brood of a famous Blue Hen, and the Delaware soldiers fought so hard that they were compared to these fighting cocks. The same story gives Delaware its other nickname, the “Blue Hen State”.

The holly

The American holly is the evergreen often called Christmas holly, with dark, thorny-leaved foliage and red berries, and the state counts it among Delaware’s most important forest trees.