The States and Mottoes: United They All Stand

“Virtue, liberty and independence.”

“United we stand, divided we fall.”

“Ever upward.”

Fine, noble phrases they are. But more than mere pieces of oratorical garnish, they literally also are words to live by--the respective state mottoes of Pennsylvania, Kentucky and New York.

Each state has a motto: some great, guiding principle by which its citizens can chart their day-to-day existence. It’s easier to live up to the motto in some states than others.

Consider the Rhode Islanders. Theirs is not only the smallest state in the nation, it also boasts the most succinct, easily followed motto: “Hope.” For more real estate, one might assume.

In the Pacific Northwest, things are a little fuzzier, perhaps because of the large amounts of rainfall.

“By and by” is Washington’s maxim, which causes more than a few furrowed brows among its populace and visitors, according to David Hastings of the Washington State Archives. He was happy to set the record straight.

“When the first settlers arrived at Seattle in 1852, they had visions of creating a city that would be as great as New York,” Hastings said. He said the newcomers took to calling the settlement “New York Alki,” the last word borrowed from a Chinook slang term that meant “by and by.”

The Big Apple was never quite duplicated in the apple-producing state, but the phrase stuck.

‘I Have Found It’

California’s familiar “Eureka”--a derivative of an ancient Greek word meaning “I have found it”--nearly fell by the wayside in 1957, when there was a movement to change it to “In God We Trust,” according to Genevive Troka, a California archivist.

“The motto came into being at the Constitutional Convention of 1849. It was meant to imply that a promised land had been found,” she said.

Apparently, people thought the feeling still applied. The motto stayed.

Many mottoes still are seen on state seals in the classic Latin language. Not only does that look more official, but the condensed nature of Latin allows more wisdom to be crammed into less space than English, according to a member of the North Carolina secretary of state’s office.

She was at a loss, however, to explain the origin of her state’s rather cosmic motto: “To be rather than to seem.”

One of the last states to decide on a formal precept was New Hampshire, where the issue finally was put to rest in 1945 with a statewide contest that drew 3,500 suggestions, archivist Frank Mevers said.

The slightly theatrical winner has been immortalized on New Hampshire license plates: “Live free or die.”

The stereotypical New Englander’s famed forthrightness is much in evidence in the Maine motto, “I direct,” an analogy that harks back to the state’s seafaring tradition.

New Mexico’s state archivist, Stanley Hordes, had a firm handle on the rather esoteric “It grows as it goes” motto that graces his state’s seal.

“The whole idea of positivism was very strong at the time the seal was first presented (1851),” he said. “They were trying to promote the idea of New Mexico as an area that would constantly be growing and progressing--it was a chance to change that eastern concept of the area as a backward place.”