Episode 1 of 6

First Committee Named

Name: First Committee Named
Start: 1776-07-04
Location: Continental Congress

When: July 4, 1776
Where: Continental Congress
Part of: Adoption of the Great Seal of the United States

Congress named the first committee to design a Great Seal on July 4, 1776, the day independence was declared.

On July 4, 1776, the same day the thirteen colonies declared independence from Great Britain, the Continental Congress named the first committee charged with designing a Great Seal, or national emblem, for the country. This began a design effort that would span six years.

Sources

Great Seal of the United States Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-27

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.