Charles Thomson largely designed the Great Seal of the United States, adopted during the founding era remembered by America250.
Thomson was secretary of the Continental Congress when Congress asked him in June 1782 to develop a final seal design from ideas submitted by three earlier committees. He combined elements from those proposals, including the eagle, thirteen arrows, olive branch, constellation, pyramid, and Latin mottos.
Congress accepted Thomson’s design on June 20, 1782. William Barton, a heraldic expert, made several final alterations, including changes to the shield’s stripes and the eagle’s wing position. The first brass die was used in September 1782, when Thomson applied the seal to a document concerning the exchange of prisoners.
The seal’s imagery is frequently mistaken for a design created solely by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, or John Adams. Those men served on the first committee and proposed ideas, but Thomson assembled the final design. The number thirteen refers to the original states and appears repeatedly in the seal’s symbolism.