Florida Memory is administered by the Florida Department of State, Division of Library and Information Services, Bureau of Archives and Records Management. The digitized records on Florida Memory come from the collections of the State Archives of Florida and the special collections of the State Library of Florida.
State Archives of Florida
- ArchivesFlorida.com
- State Archives Online Catalog
- ArchivesFlorida.com
- ArchivesFlorida.com
State Library of Florida
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Listen: The Latin ProgramFlorida's State Seal created in 1985
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Biographical Note
The Firestone seal was minted from droplets of silver unearthed at the site near the Capitol of the Spanish mission of San Juan de Aspalaga, which was burned in 1704. Since 1868, the official Seal has been the size of a silver dollar.
Among the anomalies of the Old Seal: a bag of coffee, never a prime crop in Florida; a cocoa palm instead of the state's Sabal (Palmetto) palm; an Indian maiden dressed as a Plains Indian, mountains in a state where the highest elevation is 345 feet, and questionable seaworthiness of the sidewheel steamer.
Firestone had commissioned a revision of the Seal by Museum of Florida History artist, John Locastro, to remove inconsistencies, some of which had survived since 1868. The Secretary of State is the legal custodian of the Seal.
As custodian of the seal, first by Constitutional authority and since 1968 by statute, the Secretaries of State have occasionally caused changes to be made in the seal, within the language of the Constitution and statute. Secretary of State R. A. Gray (1930-1961), for example, lengthened the skirt of the Indian.
The present State Seal was adopted by Governor Bob Graham and the Cabinet on May 21, 1985, upon its presentation by Secretary of State George Firestone.
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