Missouri State Flag     1998

The Flag of the Great State of Missouri

The Missouri State Flag

On March 22, 1913, Governor Elliott Woolfolk Major signed the bill giving the state an official flag.  The emblem was designed under the auspices of the Daughters of the American Revolution by Mrs. Robert Oliver in 1908-1909.  According to Mrs. Oliver:

The design I offer embraces all the colors of the national flag – red, white and blue – which recognizes that the State of Missouri is a part and parcel of the Federal Government.  At the same time it represents the state as processing a local independence, a local self-government, but in perfect harmony with the great national compact, as shown by the mingling of the colors, red, white and blue, on every side of it.

The coat of arms of the state is in the center of the national colors and represents Missouri as she is – the geographical center of the nation.  The twenty-four (24) stars on the blue band encircling the coat of arms signifies that Missouri was the twenty-fourth state admitted into the Union of States.  The blue I the flag signifies vigilance, permanency and justice; the red, valor; and the white, purity.

The design of the official flag of the State of Missouri was prescribed by an act of the Forty-seventh General Assembly of Missouri in 1913.  Following is the descriptive provision of the State Flag Law.

“The official flag of the State of Missouri is rectangular in shape and its vertical width is to the horizontal length as seven is to twelve.  It has one red, one white and one blue horizontal stripe of equal width; the red is at the top and the blue at the bottom.  In the center of the flag there is a band of blue in the form of a circle enclosing the coat of arms in the colors as established by law on a white ground.  The width of the blue band is one-fourteenth of the vertical width of the flag and the diameter of the circle is one-third of the horizontal length of the flag.  In the blue band there are set at equal distances from each other twenty-four, five pointed stars.  The original copy of the design shall be kept in the office of the secretary of state.  The Flag shall conform to the design set out on page 49, Revised Statutes of Missouri, 1959.”

The law may be found on page 47, Section 10.020, Chapter 10, Revised Statutes of Missouri, 1959.

As may be seen from the accompanying description, the red stripe is at the top, the white in the middle, and the blue at the bottom.  In the contrasting blue circle, which encloses the coat of arms of Missouri was the twenty-fourth state admitted to the Union.

The original state flag that was conceived, designed and created by Mrs. Marie Elizabeth Watkins Oliver, wife of former Senator R. B. Oliver of Gape Girardeau, was presented to Secretary of State Warren E. Hearnes, who accepted in behalf of the State of Missouri on June 14, 1961 from Allen L. Oliver, son of Senator and Mrs. R. B. Oliver.  It is now on display in the Office of Secretary of State…