PENNSYLVANIA, FLAG OF

U.S. state flag consisting of a dark blue field (background) bearing a central coat of arms with black horses as supporters. In 1777 a seal was created bearing the coat of arms now found on the state flag. The Pennsylvania legislature authorized the use of the coat of arms on a flag for the state militia on April 9, 1799, and variations on this flag design were used throughout the 19th century. Finally, on June 13, 1907, a state flag for nonmilitary purposes was approved by the legislature, and it is still in use. Agriculture and commerce are represented in the coat of arms by the ship and the wheat sheaves (apparently copied from the municipal seal of Philadelphia), the plow (which appeared in the earlier coat of arms of Chester county), the wreath of corn and olive, and the horses in harness. The state motto, Virtue, liberty and independence, is inscribed on the ribbon below the arms. The standard of the Pennsylvania governor employs the same design on a background of white rather than blue. Whitney Smith History Swedes were the first European settlers in the area that was to become Pennsylvania. Traveling up the Delaware from a settlement at the present site of Wilmington, Del., Governor Johan Printz of the colony of New Sweden established his capital on Tinicum Island in 1643, within the boundaries of modern Pennsylvania. Other Europeans, principally the Dutch, established trading posts within Pennsylvania as early as 1647, although the Swedes remained at Tinicum until 1655. In that year, rivalry and fighting between the Dutch and the Swedes led Peter Stuyvesant, governor of New Netherland, to seize New Sweden. Dutch control of the region ended in 1664, when the English seized all of New Netherland in the name of the Duke of York. The Quaker colony In March 1681 King Charles II of England signed a charter giving the region to William Penn in payment of a debt owed by the king to Penn's father, Admiral Sir William Penn. The charter, which was officially proclaimed on April 2, 1681, named the territory for Admiral Penn and included also the term sylvania ("woodlands"), as the younger Penn requested. William Penn intended that the colony should provide a haven of religious tolerance for his fellow Quakers. While still in England, he drew up the first of his "frames of government" and sent his cousin, William Markham, to establish claim to the land and also to establish the boundaries of what became the city of Philadelphia. Penn arrived in 1682 and called a General Assembly to discuss the first Frame of Government and to adopt the Great Law, which guaranteed freedom of conscience in the colony. Under Penn's influence, fair treatment was accorded the Indians, who responded with friendship in return. When Penn returned to England in 1684, the new Quaker province had a firmly established government based on religious tolerance and government by popular will.