North Carolina had an official seal since 1633, with most created under the direction of the King of England. The state seal features Liberty and Plenty, added in 1778, and was modified in 1983 to include important dates and the state motto.
North Carolina is one of the original 13 colonies of the United States, and the North Carolina state seal has a long history. Prior to creating its own seal, North Carolina had some form of official seal since 1633. Prior to the American Revolution, most of its official seals were created at the direction of the King of England or his lords. The Story of the Seal follows the history of America, from its days under Crown rule to the Declaration of Independence and its role as a state in the new nation of the United States.
King Charles II chartered the colony of North Carolina in 1663, before a governing body was established there. The Lords Proprietors, English lords who held title to the lands of North Carolina through a grant from the Crown, adopted a seal showing the coat of arms of each of the eight lords who owned the land. Two years later, the Albemarle County Government was formed and adopted a modified version of the seal of the Lords Proprietors, which added letters spelling out the word Albemarle between the individual lords’ coats of arms.
In 1729, the Crown purchased the Province of North Carolina and King George II ordered a new seal to be prepared. The seal was to bear the legend “Georgius Secondus”, the Latin phrase for the king’s title. Like earlier seals, it was small and used to seal documents such as legal patents and land grants made by the Crown. It was ordered to be affixed to any public document bearing the king’s name and remained the provincial seal of North Carolina from 1730 to 1767.
In 1776, the colonies began to rebel against King George III and declare their independence. The new North Carolina constitution mandated the creation of a North Carolina state seal. In 1778, a congressional bill commissioned William Tisdale, a newly appointed judge of North Carolina’s Admiralty Court, to design the state seal under the governor’s direction.
The central feature of the North Carolina state seal, last modified in 1983, is Liberty and Plenty, symbolically represented by two women, enclosed in a circle. Liberty has a scroll in her right hand inscribed with the word “Constitution”. In her left hand she holds a pole topped with a liberty cap, historically worn by French revolutionaries as a symbol of their struggle for freedom. Plenty sits by a large horn of plenty overflowing with fruits and vegetables and holds a bundle of wheat, symbolic of North Carolina’s rich farmland. The mountains behind the women lead to the sea, on which a three-masted ship sails.
In 1983, the date April 12, 1776 was added to the North Carolina state seal just below the numerals for Liberty and Abundance. This is the date of the Halifax Resolves, which authorized North Carolina delegates to the Continental Congress to vote for independence. Above the women’s heads is the date May 25, 1775. This is the date the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence was issued in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. The North Carolina state motto, “Esse Quam Videri,” which means “To be rather than seem” in Latin, appears at the bottom of the seal between two stars.
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