Flag of Connecticut

A compromise of three proposals

Before the 1890s Connecticut had no official flag. It used various banners on state occasions, including the blue regimental colors its troops had carried in the Civil War. In 1895 the Anna Warner Bailey Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, from Groton, sent the legislature a memorial asking for an official state flag. On May 29, 1895, Governor O. Vincent Coffin proposed one, and the General Assembly appointed a special committee the same day.

Three groups had ideas. The DAR chapter had its own design. James J. Goodwin of the Connecticut Society of Colonial Wars proposed another. And Civil War veterans wanted to keep the blue of the regimental flags. The design adopted in 1897 combined them: the state arms on a blue silk field. As a reward for starting the effort, the DAR chapter was allowed to present the first flag made under the new law. No single designer is credited.

What the flag shows

• The blue field. Azure blue, kept from Connecticut’s Civil War regimental flags.
• The shield. A white shield of rococo design carrying the state arms.
• Three grapevines. Each vine bears fruit and is tied to a support. The law assigns no meaning, but the Connecticut State Library says they most likely represent the first three English towns, Hartford, Windsor and Wethersfield. Some accounts say they stand for the three colonies of Connecticut, New Haven and Saybrook.
• The border. Gold inside and silver outside, decorated with clusters of white oak leaves and acorns. The white oak is the state tree.
• The streamer. A white ribbon below the shield, cleft at both ends and edged in gold, with the motto in dark blue block letters: QUI TRANSTULIT SUSTINET, “He who transplanted still sustains.”

By law the flag measures five feet six inches long and four feet four inches wide.

An old motto and older vines

The flag is new compared with its symbols. The grapevines and the motto go back to the seal of the Saybrook Colony, brought from England in 1639, and the motto has appeared in some form on every Connecticut colonial and state seal since. The vines suggest a people transplanted to a new land and flourishing there, which is what the motto says.

The 1990 rewrite

In 1990 the legislature rewrote the official description of the flag and the arms, in Public Act 90-156. The new text specifies details the old one left open, such as the direction in which the vines twist, the oak-leaf-and-acorn border and the exact lettering on the streamer. The description is now in section 3-107 of the Connecticut General Statutes.