Delaware State Coat of Arms

The Delaware coat of arms is the central design of the state seal and appears on official documents, government buildings, and publications across Delaware. It is a traditional heraldic design with a shield, two human supporters, and a motto scroll below.

The shield is divided into three sections showing a ship, an ox, and wheat. A farmer stands to the left of the shield and a soldier to the right, each one holding it up. Below runs the motto Liberty and Independence. The design reflects Delaware in its founding years: a small state with agricultural roots, an active coastline, and a colony that fought for independence.

Delaware's history as a distinct political unit began in 1704, when the three lower counties on the Delaware River, which had been part of Pennsylvania under William Penn's proprietorship, were granted their own assembly. This gave what would become Delaware a separate legislative identity nearly seventy years before independence.

Delaware adopted its first state constitution on September 20, 1776, shortly after the Declaration of Independence. The new General Assembly, which convened in 1777, established the coat of arms as part of the state's official identity. The design it chose reflected the two industries that defined Delaware: farming on its fertile coastal plain and trade along the Delaware River and Bay.

Delaware became the first state to ratify the United States Constitution on December 7, 1787. That date earned Delaware the permanent nickname the First State, and it appears on the state flag surrounding the coat of arms. The coat of arms itself has retained its core symbols since the founding era, though the artwork has been refined over time.

The Delaware coat of arms uses symbols drawn from the state's founding economy and its role in the American Revolution, arranged around a shield with two human figures standing on either side.

The coat of arms describes Delaware in two registers. The shield and its symbols capture what Delaware was economically: a farming colony that used the river to trade. The farmer and soldier standing on either side capture what Delaware did: it grew its food and fought for its independence.

Together the six elements make a compact argument. Delaware was a small state, one of the smallest in the Union, but it placed its values directly on its coat of arms: the labor of farming, the trade of ships, the sacrifice of soldiers, and the liberty those sacrifices were meant to protect.

The motto Liberty and Independence closes the design with the reason for all of it. Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution on December 7, 1787, making those two words not just an aspiration but an accomplished fact at the moment the coat of arms was in use.

The core symbols of the Delaware coat of arms, the ship, the ox, the wheat, the farmer, the soldier, and the motto Liberty and Independence, have been part of the design since the founding era. The artwork has been refined by engravers and seal-makers over the centuries, but no official redesign has changed the main elements or their meaning.