About My State Flag ( Pin )

[tennisnut]

Since my family is in the educational field I thought it appropriate that I give some history about my state flag. If one is so FORTUNATE to acquire a Kentucky State DS pin then you should know about what is on the flag.
Ok...if you don't then please disregard this post.
I hope others will volunteer their knowledge about their flag.
It may sway me in trying to get different state pins....who knows?

The Kentucky flag has a navy blue background. In the middle is a statesman and a pioneer embracing. Above them is our state motto....United We Stand
below them is.... Divided We Fall

The top of the flag says....Commonwealth of Kentucky .... with a wreath of the state flower ...
the Golden rod.

Thank everything the state wild animal is not on the flag....the gray squirrel.....

Now , how original is that!!!!! ?

I would love to hear about other flags....Anyone?
Susan

 

[Luv2Roam]

Nebraska was one of the last states to adopt a State Flag.
In 1921, a state flag design by a New York Architect was presented to the Legislature, but was turned down as being inappropriate.
Instead, a banner for the State of Nebraska consistes of a reproduction of the great seal of the state, charged on the center in gold and silver on a field of national blue.
The 1963 Legislature designated the state banner the official flag of Nebraska.
The original State Flag is currently hanging in the Secretary of State's office for the viewing pleasure of the public.
"The eastern part of the circle to be represented by a steamboat ascending the Missouri River, the mechanic arts to be represented by a smith with a hammer and anvil, in the foreground, agriculture to be represented by a settlers cabin, sheaves of wheat, and stalks of growing corn, in the background a train of cars heading towards the Rocky Mountains, and on the extreme west, the Rocky Mountains to be plainly in view, around the top of the circle, to be in capital letters, the motto: "Equality Before the Law,"...
(***Which I guess that's why Malcom X left here ) ...and the circle to be surrounded with the words, "Great Seal of the State of Nebraska, March 1, 1867." A sum of twenty-five dollars was appropriated to enable the Secretary of State to carry out the act and the bill was signed into law by Governor Butler on June 15, 1867.
According to legend the seal purchased by then Secretary of State Thomas Kennard played a key role when the State Capitol was moved from Omaha to Lincoln in 1868. According to Mr. Kennard's statements much later in his life he and Governor Butler had decided to go along with the movement to make the move to Lincoln. "So Governor Butler and I, without consulting any other person, decided what steps we should take. We planned that he should leave Omaha and go to his home in Pawnee City and prepare his proclamation announcing the removal, that I would go to my home in Washington county and on the following Sunday I would hitch up my team and drive up to Omaha, go into the Capitol, wrap up the seal, carefully take it out and place it under the seat in my buggy, drive straight to the west over the prairies and before Sunday closed cross the Platte river.
The scheme was successfully carried out, and on the following Monday I appeared at the new Capitol with the State Seal and put the impression upon the proclamation of Governor Butler, who met me here, and which declared that the Capitol of the State of Nebraska was at Lincoln, County of Lancaster, Nebraska, and now open for business."
The same seal that was purchased in 1867 and played the key role in the moving of the Capitol from Omaha to Lincoln the next year, is still in use today. The Seal is located in the Secretary of State's office and still leaves its impression on all official State documents.


State Soft Drink-- Kool-Aid:
The beginning -- In 1900, in Hendley, NE, eleven-year-old Edwin Perkins sends away for a Mixer's Guide he sees in a magazine advertisement. His earliest experiments included making flavoring extracts and perfumes in his mother's kitchen.

 

[AZ JazzyJ]

The lower half of the Arizona state flag is a blue field with the upper half divided into thirteen equal segments, six light yellow and seven red forming a sunburst effect. In the center of the flag is a copper-colored five-point star. The red and the blue are required to be the same shades as the flag of the United States of America. The thirteen segments represent the original colonies of the United States. An official flag is required to be four feet high and six feet wide. The flag was designed by Charles W. Harris and first sewn by Nan D. Hayden. The color choices were interesting. Blue and yellow are the Arizona colors while red and yellow were the colors of the Spanish Conquistadors headed by Francisco Vásquez de Coronado who first came to Arizona in 1540. The interesting thing about Coronado was that he was not the first Conquistador to arrive in Arizona. That distinction belongs to Marcos de Niza who arrived a year earlier in 1539. In both cases de Niza and Coronado were in search of the mythical Seven Cities of Gold foretold by the natives. In 1848, after the Mexican War, most of the Arizona territory became part of the U.S., and the southern portion of the territory was added by the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. The copper star in the center of the flag represents Arizona as being the largest producer of copper in the nation. Arizona was formally admitted into the union in 1912 (February 14th to be exact) as the 48th state. It was the last state added before Alaska and Hawaii. The state flag was not radified until 1917, a practice common among many states. There was heavy debate among state legislators and citizens on the design. Many felt that the sun beams radiating from a star were "astronomically improbable" and should be eliminated. An interesting side note, if the state flag is flown upside down, it looks like a sunrise in China.

The State Tree is the Palo Verde
The State Bird is the Cactus Wren
The State Flower is the Saguaro Cactus


Jeff

 

[nsmia]

The Maryland flag has been described as the perfect state flag--bold colors, interesting patterns, and correct heraldry--a flag that fairly shouts "Maryland." The design of the flag comes from the shield in the coat of arms of the Calvert family, the colonial proprietors of Maryland. George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore, adopted a coat of arms that included a shield with alternating quadrants featuring the yellow-and-black colors of his paternal family and the red-and-white colors of his maternal family, the Crosslands. When the General Assembly in 1904 adopted a banner of this design as the state flag, a link was forged between modern-day Maryland and the very earliest chapter of the proprietorship of the Calvert family.

Neither the designer nor the date of origin of this new Maryland flag is certain, but a banner in this form was known at least by October 1880. Flags incorporating four quadrants alternating between the yellow-and-black Calvert arms and the red-and-white Crossland arms appear in published sketches by Frank B. Mayer depicting the huge 150th birthday parade held in Baltimore that month. Eight years later, in October 1888, a large flag with the alternating Calvert and Crossland colors was carried by Maryland National Guard troops escorting Governor Elihu E. Jackson at the dedication ceremonies for the Maryland monument at the Gettysburg Battlefield. A year later, in October 1889, the Fifth Regiment, Maryland National Guard, adopted a flag in this form as its regimental color. The Fifth Regiment thereby became the first organization to adopt officially what is today the Maryland flag.

The adoption of this new flag by the Fifth Regiment helped popularize the design. The Fifth was the largest component of Maryland's military after 1870, and it played a conspicuous part in major public events both in and out of the state. Organized in May 1867, the Fifth Regiment was the successor organization to the Old Maryland Guard, a military unit formed in Baltimore in 1859 that dissolved when most of its officers and men went south in 1861 to join the Confederate Army.

True to its heritage, the original Fifth Regiment consisted primarily of Maryland-born former Confederate officers and soldiers. The new regimental color adopted in 1889, combining the traditional yellow-and-black "Maryland colors" with the red-and-white "secession colors" in the form of a bottony cross, must have seemed especially appropriate to members of the Fifth. The colors symbolically represented what had happened to the Fifth Regiment itself in the quarter century since the Civil War. Originally denounced as a "Rebel Brigade," the Fifth had by the 1870s become Maryland's premier military organization, attracting Union veterans as well as former Confederates. From its inception, the Fifth Regiment had demonstrated through its prominent participation in public events and with its summer encampments in the north that former Confederates could be good soldiers and loyal citizens of the state and the nation.

The Fifth Regiment's new regimental color was not the only example of former Confederates perpetuating and thereby popularizing the use of the red-and-white Crossland colors and the cross bottony design. The monument on Culps' Hill at the Gettysburg Battlefield commemorating the Second Maryland Infantry, CSA carries a cross bottony on each face, and the Maryland Line Confederate Soldiers' Home, established in Pikesville in 1888, featured a large cross bottony over the main gate. Confederate veterans' organizations used the cross bottony on service badges and on invitations to events they sponsored. Beginning a custom that would later be officially recognized by law, the Fifth Regiment by 1905 had replaced the silver eagle on the flagstaff bearing its regimental color with a cross bottony.

In 1904 the General Assembly affirmed the popular support shown for a banner composed of alternating Calvert and Crossland quadrants by declaring it the state flag. In 1945 a gold cross bottony was made the official ornament for a flagstaff carrying the Maryland flag.

The Maryland flag, shown on a staff properly ornamented with a gold cross bottony, is therefore much more than a symbol of state sovereignty. The flag excels as a state banner because it commemorates the vision of the founders while it reminds us of the struggle to preserve the Union. It is a unique symbol of challenges met and loyalties restored, a flag of unity and reconciliation for all the state's citizens.

Note: This information on the Maryland flag was prepared by Dr. Gregory Stiverson to accompany the Maryland Flag Protocol.


and now to continue in the more than you everwanted to know category
Maryland State Flower - Black-Eyed Susan
Maryland State Bird - Baltimore Oriole
Maryland State Song - "Maryland, My Maryland"
Maryland State Reptile - Diamondback Terrapin
Maryland State Crustacean - Blue Crab
Maryland State Insect - Baltimore Checkerspot Butterfly
Maryland State Boat - Skipjack
Maryland State Cat - Calico Cat
Maryland State Dog - Chesapeake Bay Retriever
Maryland State Dinosaur - Astrodon johnstoni (Chapter 404, Acts of 1998, in case you want to look it up!!!)
Maryland State Drink - Milk (Does this mean the Cal Ripken "milk" commercials were public service announcements?)
Maryland State Fish - Rockfish (Striped Bass)
Maryland State Folk Dance - Square Dance
Maryland State Tree - White Oak
Maryland StateFossil Shell - Ecphora gardnerae gardnerae (Wilson) (an extinct snail for those that are still reading this and wondering)
Maryland State Sport - Jousting (In 1962 maryland became the first state to adopt an official sport)
Maryland State Theaters - Center Stage & Olney Theatre ( i live about 2 miles away from it!!!)

Hope you all enjoyed this!!! Sean

 

[catwho]

No state flag existed from 1819-1861. On January 11, 1861, the Secession Convention passed a resolution designating a flag designed by a group of Montgomery women as their official flag. This flag has often been referred to as the Republic of Alabama Flag. One side of the flag displayed the Goddess of Liberty holding in her right hand an unsheathed sword; in the left a small flag with one star. In an arch above this figure were the words "Independent Now and Forever." On the other side of the flag was a cotton plant with a coiled rattlesnake. Beneath the cotton plant are the Latin words: "Noli Me Tangere," (Touch Me Not). This flag was flown until February 10, 1861, when it was removed to the Governor's Office after it was damaged by severe weather. It was never flown again.

From March 4, 1861 until General James H. Wilson's occupation of Montgomery in April 1865, a Confederate National Flag was flown, either the First National Flag or the Second National Flag. After the end of the Civil War, the United States Flag was used for all official occasions.

The present Alabama State Flag was authorized by the Alabama Legislature on February 16, 1895, by act number 383. According to the Acts of Alabama, 1895, the state flag was to be a crimson cross of St. Andrew on a field of white. The bars forming the cross were not to be less than six inches broad and must extend diagonally across the flag from side to side. The act does not designate a square or a rectangular flag.

<whew> Whatever you look out it, it's a boring flag. LOL! I miss Oregon's flag which boosts eing the only flag in the nation that has 2 official sides that are diferent!



44 more days!

 

[Obi-Wan Pinobi]

The Virginia flag is one of those with the state seal on a field of royal blue. Of course, the state seal features a half naked amazon standing on a guy. Pretty cool, huh??

The seal was designed in 1776 by George Mason, George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, and Robert Carter Nicholas. The half-naked woman is supposed to be the Roman goddess Virtus, representing the spirit of Virginia, having slain Tyranny. The state motto is "Sic Semper Tyrannis" (thus always to tyrants).

I know more about the history of the Georgia flag, but I'll let a current GA resident share that information.