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Monroe County Museum
Missouri State Seal

The Missouri State Seal

As displayed in mosaic
on the Monroe County Courthouse rotunda floor

Taken From Across Our Wide Missouri, Jan.-June (Volume 1), 1982,  by Bob Priddy

JANUARY 11     THE STATE SEAL

   The Governor was most disturbed by the lack of an official State Seal.  He told the legislature "considerable inconvenience daily arises from the want of a seal of state."  About two years after the drafting of a constitution was authorized and seven months after statehood had been formally granted, Missouri finally had a State Seal.
   The man who designed it is largely forgotten today, although he was a distinguished figure of his time.
   Robert Wells came from Virginia.  Some believe he went to school with Hamilton Gamble, the man who would later be our Civil War Governor.  Wells moved to St. Louis, as a surveyor, during Missouri's territorial days.  By 1820 he had taken up the practice of law in St. Charles, destined to be the first Capital City of our state.  The early legislatures show him as a member representing St. Charles County.  On several occasions he served as acting Speaker of the House.
   Wells became Missouri's Attorney General in 1826, the third person to hold that job.  Five years later he challenged the prominent fur-trading entrepreneur and St. Louis businessman William H. Ashley for a seat in Congress, a seat which had fallen vacant because of the death of Spencer Pettis in a duel.  But Ashley beat him by about 700 votes.
   In later years, Robert Wells was the president of the 1845 State Constitutional Convention, a curator for the University of Missouri, and a United States District Attorney.  He died in 1864.
   Through the years there have been disagreements about the meanings of some of the symbols on the seal he designed.  Some have attacked the use of the bears on the seal, noting that bears are vicious and deadly.
   More than 25 years after he designed the seal, Wells wrote a letter in which he explained the symbolism.
   The creation of a State Seal relies on heraldry and in heraldry only the good properties of animals are emphasized.  For instance, wrote Robert Wells in 1847, "the United States, in adopting the eagle, is not supposed to indicate that the U.S. are like a bird of prey or will prey upon and devour other nations."  Therefore Wells chose the White or Grizzly Bear because of its "vast power, great courage and prodigious hardihood; emblematical of the great resources of the state, of the courage and hardihood of its citizens."
   A line surrounds the Seal of the United States.  Wells said it symbolizes "that the whole make one government, yet are separate and distinct governments for certain purposes."
   The crest over the arms of the state is a gold helmet with six bars.  It "indicates that the state, although sovereign as to some matters is not sovereign as to all; the helmet being that of a prince but not that of a king."  The helmet represents military enterprise also.
   The Seal shows one star rising to a field rising to a field of 23 other stars.  Wells wrote that "The large star ascending from a cloud into a constellation of 23 smaller stars indicates the rise of Missouri into the ... union of 23 states and the difficulty attending to it ... the Missouri Compromise."
   The bears are standing on a banner on which is written in Latin the state motto: Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto.  Translated, that means "Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law," which Wells says is the foundation of state government.
   The State Seal carries the date 1820.  That wasn't the year Missouri was admitted to the union.  That was the year the state was allowed to draft a constitution.
   The original seal design had no date on it.  But Henry Geyer, later a U.S. Senator, suggested it should carry the year 1820 and it was incorporated into the design.
   The original State Seal no longer exists.  When the Capital burned in Jefferson City in 1837, the original design by Wells was Lost.  The State Seal we have today shows some refinements.  The bears look a little more realistic and they face each other.  The first seal had the bears looking out at the viewer.
   The present State Seal has an interesting history as well.  It was in Confederate hands for a while.  It was taken south by Governor Jackson and not returned to the state until some time after the Civil War, when former Lieutenant Governor Thomas Reynolds brought it back.  Reynolds became the Confederate Governor when Jackson died.
   Missouri's State Seal finally became a part of our state and ended a Governor's inconvenience a year and a half after statehood when Governor McNair approved the bill creating it on this date, January 11, 1822.