Flag of New Hampshire

What the flag shows

• The blue field. Required by the flag law.
• The state seal. In its proper colors: the frigate Raleigh on the stocks at Portsmouth, a rising sun on the sea horizon behind it, and a granite boulder in the foreground. Around it runs the inscription SEAL OF THE STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, with the date 1776.
• The laurel wreath. Laurel leaves surround the seal.
• Nine stars. Set among the laurel leaves, for New Hampshire’s place as the ninth state to ratify the Constitution. The meaning is the traditional one; the statute does not explain the stars.

Ships and sun

The ship on the seal goes back to 1784. New Hampshire’s first seal, from 1776, showed a pine tree, fish and a bundle of arrows. In 1784 it was replaced by a design showing a ship being built on the stocks with a rising sun behind it, a nod to the shipyards of Portsmouth. That ship-and-sun design is the ancestor of the seal on today’s flag.

The 1909 flag

Before 1909 New Hampshire had no single state flag; the state was represented by the regimental flags of its militia units. In 1909 the Legislature adopted the first official state flag: the seal on a blue field, inside a laurel wreath with nine stars.

Redrawing the seal

Over the years, engravers took liberties with the old seal, adding rum barrels and even people to the dock scene. In 1931 a committee named by Governor John G. Winant, advised by Otis G. Hammond, director of the New Hampshire Historical Society, wrote an exact legal description of the seal. It named the ship as the frigate Raleigh, built at Portsmouth in 1776 and later captured by the British, and allowed only a granite boulder on the land in the foreground. The flag law was amended the same year, so the standardized seal became the one on the flag. That is the flag’s only change.

Attempts at change

In 2025 two redesign bills failed. House Bill 176, which would have replaced the flag with a silhouette of the Old Man of the Mountain and the motto “Live Free or Die,” was killed in the House in March. House Bill 210, which would have set up a commission to study a redesign, passed the House but was killed in the Senate on May 1, 2025.

Rules for the flag

State law requires the flag to fly above the State House whenever the legislature is in session, and state flags bought with state money or displayed in state buildings must be made in the United States. The seal itself is state property, and using it on merchandise or advertising without the secretary of state’s permission is a crime. New Hampshire has no official pledge or salute to its flag.