New Hampshire’s State Symbols

New Hampshire’s symbols are named in its statutes, in chapter 3 of the Revised Statutes Annotated, headed “State Emblems, Flag, Etc.” Twenty-nine of its sections each name one: a motto, a seal, a flag, an emblem, ten songs, a tartan, and the plants, animals, stones, foods and sport below. Each section links to the chapter on this site.

The year beside each is the earliest year the section’s source note gives. Where the law is from 1989 or later, the bill that made it is linked to its page in this site’s record.

The motto is the words “Live Free or Die,” written by General John Stark on July 31, 1809. The flag is blue, with the state seal at its center inside a wreath of laurel leaves and nine stars. The seal is two inches across, and the law sets out its detail “and no other”: the frigate Raleigh on the stocks, still being built, the sun rising over the sea, a granite boulder, and the date 1776 between two stars. The emblem may be placed on the state’s printed material about developing its recreational, industrial and agricultural resources.

The seal’s source note opens with entries that name no year, so 1931 is the first year it gives. The tartan’s colors each stand for something, its section says: purple for the purple finch and the purple lilac, the state bird and the state flower; green for the forests; black for the granite mountains; white for the snow; and red for all state heroes.

Sixteen of the sections name a living thing. The first was the purple lilac, in 1919. The most recent is the Virginia opossum, in 2025, and its section adds that opossums found within the state’s borders “shall be known as ‘New Hampshire opossums.’”

Granite, beryl and smoky quartz were named by the same law, in 1985. The foods came later: the pumpkin in 2006, apple cider in 2010 and the white potato in 2013.

The state flag is displayed above the State House whenever the legislature is in session, during meetings of the Governor and Council when expedient, and on other occasions the Governor designates (RSA 3:3). The Governor may make rules for its use and display, and the law is to be read “to encourage the display of the state flag on public buildings” (RSA 3:4).

The POW-MIA flag is displayed above the State House, all state facilities and the state’s military facilities whenever the flag of the United States is flown (RSA 3:3-a). Only flags officially recognized by the federal government may be flown over the State House. A state, United States or POW-MIA flag bought with state funds or displayed in a state facility must be made in the United States, if it was acquired after that section took effect (RSA 3:4-a).

This site’s bill record goes back to 1989, and some of its bills proposed a symbol that never became law. Each line is the record’s own: the bill’s number, its year, its title and how it ended.

Two of them came back. The red-tailed hawk, killed as HB 373 in 2015, became the state raptor as HB 280 in 2019. The Virginia opossum’s own bill, SB 30, died in 2025 when the chambers did not agree on a version; the same designation passed that year inside HB 776-FN, a bill about the crime of aggravated driving while intoxicated.

Changing the Flag

The flag’s section was last changed in 1931, by its source note. Every bill in the record that proposed to change it, or to study it, has died or gone to interim study.

This site's bill record begins in 1989, so a symbol named before then has no bill page here; its year is the one its section's source note gives. The proposals that did not pass were found by their titles, so a symbol proposed inside a bill titled for something else would not be among them.

• RSA 3, State Emblems, Flag, Etc., on this site's Laws pagesGranite Record
• This site's bill record, 1989 to 2026Granite Record