Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 63, number 2, winter, 1979-1980

              holzhueter:   Wisconsin s flag
and a lawyer; John Lathrop, president of the University of Wisconsin, the University of Missouri, and Indiana University, an early publicist of Wisconsin, and an early scholar in the social sciences; and Edward G. Ryan, a lawyer, Democratic politician, and future chief justice of the state's supreme court. In short, this was a distinguished trio of prominent, law-abiding citizens, who must have been aware of the legislature's constitutional per¬ quisites in connection with the seal. Even so, they ignored them.
Dewey, it was said, disliked the great seal. He asked Lathrop, who, like most academics of his day, must have known something about heraldry and the classics, to design a new one. Lathrop did so, and included a Latin motto. Dewey took the design to New York for engraving. On his way to the engraver's shop, he accidentally met Ryan and asked him what he thought of Lathrop's sketch. Ryan did not like it, especially the Latin motto, so the two stepped into a convenient Wall Street office (the 1880 Blue Book and most subsequent accounts put them on the steps of a Wall Street bank) and redesigned it. For the Latin motto they substituted 'Tor- ward," and for the crest they employed the badger. In this impromptu manner, Wiscon¬ sin's principal symbol came into being.'"
On April 17, 1852, the legislature regular¬ ized the governor's somewhat irregular maneu¬ ver by adopting the seal "now in use" as of¬ ficial. But it does not appear to have autho¬ rized payment for it, nor have there come to the surface any clues about the engraver's identity, his fee, or legislative sentiment.  The
^^ Wisconsin State Journal, December 10, 1879; Wis¬ consin, Blue Book, 1880, pp. 276-277. It is possible that Reuben Gold Thwaites, from 1887 to 1913 the director of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, wrote the State Journal story. He was the paper's man¬ aging editor from 1876 to 1886, and in 1907 wrote a paper about the seals, in which he referred to the 1879 article. The article, an ephemeral piece of journalism, easily would have escaped notice had not the author known of it. The earlier author, perhaps Thwaites, interviewed Chief Justice Ryan. Governor Dewey told much the same story, but gave himself, not Ryan, credit for the motto. See Victor Kutchin, "Some Per¬ sonal Recollections of Governor Dewey," in Wisconsin Magazine of History, 10: 415-416 (June, 1927). The Blue Book account may be slightly more accurate than the State Journal's, since the latter had been subject to correction by both Dewey and  Ryan.
Wisconsin Blue Book,   1880
This seal served  the  State  of  Wisconsin from 1851   to 1881.    Today,  only   impres.sions   of  it are  extant.
secretary of state used layman's language to describe the seal, in contrast to the heraldic description that came into use thirty years later. He also failed to distinguish the coat of arms in the center of the seal from the seal itself, which had "thirteen stars for the origi¬ nal States of the Union," "a plough for Agri¬ culture [,] an arm and held hammer for manu¬ factories [,] a crossed shovel and pick for min¬ ing [,] and an anchor for navigation, repre¬ senting the industrial pursuits of . . . the State." The United States arms and motto be¬ tokened "the allegiance of the State to the Union." There were also a horn of plenty, a pyramid of lead ore (not of lead ingots), a yeoman resting on a pick to represent labor by land, and a sailor holding a coil of rope to represent labor by water. These basic ele¬ ments, or variations of them, have persisted to the present.11
'1 For the resolution adopting the seal, see Wisconsin, Senate, Journal, 1852, p. 730; and Wisconsin, ."Vssembly, Journal, 1852, p. 938. No contemporary evidence about creation of the seal was found in a search of 1851-1852 archival records for the governor, secretary of state, treasurer, and legislature, nor in the personal papers of Governor Dewey and Chief Justice Ryan, all of which are in the Archives Division, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, No .significant body of Lathrop papers has been located in Wisconsin or Missouri re¬ positories. The seal's description is in the first volume of Executive Records, page  168, cited in footnote 9.
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