Norristown Borough Seal, Montgomery County Pennsylvania

The basic political building block of the United States is the municipality.  Unfortunately this area of social studies is rarely studied in classrooms across the US.  Most Americans are aware of the state, nation, and county.  But when it comes to sub-county division it gets really messy.  It does not help that some towns have to divisions like Doylestown Borough vs Doylestown Township, which have different local governments.  Also Doylestown Township has other non-incorporated cities within it.  All confusion aside, the smallest government in Pennsylvania is either a Township or a Borough.  But there are a few exceptions.

The County Seat of Montgomery County Pennsylvania in Norristown Borough.  At the County Seat you'll see the deep red Montgomery County Flag.  But at the Norristown Borough Hall you see a blue flag with a beehive upon it.  Not all municipalities fly a flag, but most simply put the seal on a background.  Which is good, since the quaintness keeps it low key.  A bold abstract like flag would be overkill.

On the flag of Norristown you can see grass, a wooden table, three bees, and the bee hive.  In latin you can see municipality motto, "Fervet Opus."  This can be directly translated as 'The Work Glows.'  According to one website, that motto comes from Virgil's Georgics IV.169, where he is describing the art of bee-keeping: Fervet opus, redolentque thymo fragrantia mella. "The work glows, and the honeys smell of fragrant Thyme." Interesting because Virgil is deliberately conflating the effort to gather the honey--opus--with the product of that work--the mella.(http://latindiscussion.com/forum/latin/school-mottoes.1403/)  Further out, you can see the a standard words in a circle "The Municipality of Norristown" on the upper arc and on the lower arc "Incorp. Mar. 31, 1812.  Note the beehive of Norristown is much older than the hive of Utah.  In 1812 Utah was still a part of Spain, yet to be independent of Mexico.



Here is a close of the two flags flying at Norristown Borough Hall.  Note that the beehive is black and white, but the words on the outer seal are blue.   One sub-county flag is flying by itself, while the other is flying next to the US and Pennsylvania state flag.


https://www.norristown.org/