Before you pull out your Pilgrim-themed tchotchkes for Thanksgiving, you might want to read this story. It’s too late to get new tchotchkes for this year’s celebration, but you can always plan ahead.
In these days when everyone seems to want to use a prettified (and petrified) version of history for their own political purposes, stories like this one that challenge a pre-existing understanding of this very American holiday feel like yet another attempt to tear down the pillars of American identity. So I’m reproducing the text of this story here, to let you see how the argument among historians is playing out.
Since the days of President John F. Kennedy, Virginians have proclaimed that the nation’s first Thanksgiving was held on the banks of the James River and not in Massachusetts near Plymouth Rock.
Skeptics have said the 1962 revival of the Virginia claim was simply the public relations efforts of the late Malcolm Jamison, owner of Berkeley Plantation, and the Woodlief family, descendants of the 17th century adventurer John Woodlief, whose colonists gave the important thanks.
A Virginia politician, the late John J. Wicker contacted Kennedy, taking issue with his 1962 Thanksgiving Proclamation that gave credit to the Pilgrims of Massachusetts for the initial Thanksgiving.
A year later, just a few weeks before his assassination, Kennedy issued another Thanksgiving Proclamation, amending his earlier statement to include Virginia’s claim of thankfulness: “Over three centuries ago, our forefathers in Virginia and Massachusetts, far from home, in a lonely wildness set aside a time for Thanksgiving.”
Now, author and historian Paul Aron, of Richmond, has taken a look at the Massachusetts story and is skeptical. Aron’s recent book, “American Stories,” contains a collection of tales “true and not so true” about legends like George Washington’s cherry tree and Abraham Lincoln’s log cabin.
Among the others is a chapter — “Giving Thanks” — in which he notes that contemporaneous accounts about the 1621 feast contained no mention of “thanksgiving.” He suggests it was a 19th-century invention; there is no “pilgrim primary source (that) ties Thanksgiving to the 1621 feast or to any fall feast.”
“What the Pilgrims did NOT do was declare their harvest festival a day of Thanksgiving,” Aron writes. “It was not until 1841 that (clergyman and author) Alexander Young, in a collection of the works of (colony leaders William) Bradford and (Edward) Winslow and other Pilgrims, called the 1621 feast ‘the first Thanksgiving.’ ”
Relating to the Pilgrims’ Thanksgiving, Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of “Godley’s Lady’s Book,” began a campaign in 1848 for the government to decree that Thanksgiving would be a national holiday. Aron notes that Hale was a poet and “her most famous work begins, ‘Mary had a little lamb.’ ”
Hale wrote President Abraham Lincoln on Sept. 28, 1863, asking him to have “our annual Thanksgiving made a National (holiday) and fixed Union Festival.” She noted that for the past 15 years, her magazine had been pushing for the holiday.
[Note the word “Union” in this request]
Hale was a native New Englander, born in New Hampshire, and pointed out that Thanksgiving had been celebrated in the region for years, but she did not mention pilgrims or Massachusetts in her letter to Lincoln.
Five days after the date of Hale’s letter, Lincoln issued his proclamation decreeing the last Thursday of November as a national day of Thanksgiving.
Historically, Virginia’s claim of the first Thanksgiving was confirmed in 1931 when Lyon G. Tyler, historian, genealogist, and son of President John Tyler, was doing some research in the New York Public Library. He uncovered documents that chronicled the 1619 expedition to Virginia headed by John Woodlief that landed on the James River shore at what would become Berkeley Plantation — now Charles City County.
Tyler, the retired president of the College of William & Mary, uncovered a specific statement on Thanksgiving. Woodlief, captain of the ‘Margaret’ — the ship that sailed from Bristol, England, to Virginia — had written instructions from the London Co.
Woodlief and his crew of 35 men landed on Dec. 4, 1619, and he read the instructions that included a prayer: “Wee ordaine that this day of our ships arrival, at the place assigned for plantacon, in the land of Virginia, shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”
The Virginia Thanksgiving Festival — organized to recognize and promote Virginia’s Thanksgiving claim — opened to the public in 1965 at Berkeley Plantation. The event, which features reenactments, music and tribal dancers, is now held annually on the first Sunday in November. Graham Woodlief, direct descendant of John Woodlief, recently wrote of the Virginia Thanksgiving: “Historians noted that in the early days, the celebration of Thanksgiving was strictly a religious experience, focused entirely on prayer. It was a solemn affair, not a festival of food, such as our friends in Massachusetts had experienced” — one year and 17 days later.
Wilford Kale, Correspondent https://enewspaper.vagazette.com/html5/desktop/production/default.aspx?pubid=2de2105e-7b8b-412f-8e35-01357c42e84b
So how did the story of the Pilgrim’s ”thanksgiving” become the dominant story in our national narrative?
It’s important to realize that American history was not taught in a codified fashion in most school systems until the early years of the 20th century. Before that, what was taught depended on what the teachers knew, and that was often a skewed and incomplete version of history.
It’s also important to know that the teaching of American history as a codified discipline in colleges was also late to the game – coming primarily in the middle to end of the 19th century. This was after Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation.
The first colleges to develop an organized approach to the teaching of American history were in the north, primarily in New England. These historians focused on what they knew – their local history – and constructed their historical narratives from these sources.
They didn’t write about the Virginia thanksgiving for two reasons:
One, Lyon Tyler didn’t discover these records until the 1930s. The Pilgrim narrative was already baked in.
Second, even if they had known about these records, they were unlikely to include any information that made the South look good as they were constructing a historical narrative after the Civil War. Remember the word “Union” in Sarah Hale’s letter to Lincoln. The owners and inhabitants of Berkeley were slaveholders and didn’t merit consideration as a part of a national narrative. Better to focus on the Pilgrims and religious freedom and all of that.
You can go to this website to see how Berkeley Plantation tells this story http://www.berkeleyplantation.com/first-thanksgiving.html. They also have a gift shop where you can order your Berkeley-themed tchotchkes for next year.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!
Yes, I read that article in the Gazette today. Union. So interesting. I'm keeping my pumpkins and turkey. No black and white clad pilgrims, though.
Interesting how history plays out, and good points on why this was taught as it was in the earlier days. :)