Connecticut State Coat of Arms

The Connecticut coat of arms is the central design of the state seal and appears on official state documents, government buildings, and publications. It is one of the simplest heraldic designs of any American state: a plain white shield bearing three identical grapevines, each with leaves and clusters of grapes, with no crest or supporters.

A scroll beneath the shield carries the Latin motto Qui transtulit sustinet. The design has no complex arrangement of quarters or figures. Its clarity comes from its directness: three vines, a white field, and a four-word phrase that has identified Connecticut since the colonial era.

The grapevine design traces to the founding of Connecticut Colony in the 1630s. Puritan settlers from Massachusetts founded Windsor in 1633, Wethersfield in 1634, and Hartford in 1636, when the Reverend Thomas Hooker led a group from Newtown, Massachusetts, to the Connecticut River valley. These three towns became the original core of Connecticut Colony.

In 1639, representatives from Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield adopted the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which historians often identify as one of the first written constitutions in America. The three-town union that produced the Fundamental Orders is reflected in the three grapevines on the coat of arms.

In 1662, King Charles II granted Connecticut Colony a royal charter, one of the most liberal colonial charters in British North America. Connecticut colonists were so protective of this charter that, according to tradition, they hid it inside a hollow oak tree when the royal governor tried to seize it in 1687. That tree became known as the Charter Oak.

When Connecticut ratified the United States Constitution on January 9, 1788, becoming the fifth state, it carried its colonial coat of arms into statehood. The grapevine design and motto, which had represented the colony for over a century, became the emblem of the new state.

The Connecticut coat of arms uses a small number of elements, each chosen to describe the colony's founding and the faith of its settlers.

The coat of arms works on two levels. On a practical level, the three vines stand for the three towns that built Connecticut Colony. On a religious level, the vines and the motto together describe the Puritan settlers as a people transplanted by God from England to the New World, trusting that God would sustain them in an unfamiliar place.

The motto ties the coat of arms to a specific belief: that the colonists' migration was a divine act, not simply an economic or political decision. This belief was central to Puritan identity in the 1630s, and Connecticut placed it at the center of its official symbol.

The simplicity of the design is part of its meaning. Three vines and four Latin words contain everything the founders wanted to say about who Connecticut was and where it came from. No other element was needed.

The three-grapevine design has been Connecticut's symbol since the colonial era, with the same core elements, three vines, a white field, and the motto Qui transtulit sustinet, carried forward from the colony into the state. Minor refinements to the rendering of the vines and the lettering of the motto have occurred over time, but no official action has changed the fundamental design.