A #WESTERN #THANKSGIVING - Meg Mims

Massachusetts -- The "Wild West" of New England

Yeehaw, and Happy Thanksgiving! I suppose people may already know the "original history" and facts from the Pilgrim days, but that's all I got this month. Besides, everyone's probably out shopping today. So in the interest of history, I'll discuss what was considered "the wild west" back before and after the turn of the 16th century. The Pilgrims can't claim the first Thanksgiving celebration, though, since the Jamestown settlement had been thanking God for their survival since 1610. And the above painting, done in 1899, was a bit off in terms of clothing - the Indians are wearing Great Plains style and the Pilgrims also are inaccurate. Hey, everyone's a critic, right? At least we know "America" was west of England and Europe, and pretty wild.

Map of the 1600s settlements in New England (http://etc.usf.edu/maps/pages/7600/7698/7698.htm)

The Pilgrims who landed in Plymouth barely survived the first winter. If it wasn't for Squanto -- a Pawtuxet Indian who'd been kidnapped and sold into slavery, found his way to London and returned to the New World -- taught the Pilgrims how to plant maize, catch fish, tap the maple trees for syrup and identify good plants from poisonous. Without him, New Englanders might be speaking French, or singing "God Save the Queen" at ball games instead of The Star Spangled Banner. Who can say?

Anyway, once the Pilgrims established themselves, they invited the Wampanoag chief and his tribe to a "harvest feast" that lasted three days -- of eating, entertainment (axe-throwing, etc.) and hunting. This happened in 1621, and venison was definitely on the menu since the Indians brought the deer. Maize, fowl such as swans, ducks and geese, barley and perhaps fish and lobsters may also have been served. Potatoes had not arrived yet in the New World, and wild turkeys may or may not have been an option.

"Thanksgiving" wasn't really celebrated until President George Washington decided to name it as such for Thursday, November 26th, 1789. The Revolutionary War had taken its toll on everyone in the new "America" so bringing families and friends together was crucial. Here's a bit from the official Congressional Proclamation:

"Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor; and—Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me “to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness..."

Despite the Proclamation, subsequent Presidents -- Adams and Madison -- chose only two Thursdays during their 4-year terms to celebrate. Jefferson refused. The only official holidays at the time were George Washington's birthday and the Fourth of July; Southern states never celebrated Thanksgiving at all. Not that they weren't thankful, but they may have had their own style of harvest feasts.

It took a 20+ year campaign of letters written to several presidents by Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of the "Lady's Book" (think Oprah and Martha Stewart of the early American days, who also wrote the popular children's rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb") before Thanksgiving was declared an official holiday. Sarah also helped raise $30,000 for the Bunker Hill Monument and to preserve George Washington's Mount Vernon plantation for future generations.

Sarah had taught school before her marriage to lawyer David Hale in 1813. Together they had five children before his death in 1822. The young widow wore black from that point on until her death in 1879 at the age of 90. Her first novel, Northwood, published in 1827, was about slavery -- long before Uncle Tom's Cabin. That book also described the traditional roasted turkey and other meats at a typical Thanksgiving feast of the day, plus chicken pie, vegetables, plum puddings, custard and pumpkin pies. As "editress", she published recipes in the Lady's Book magazine as well.

But her campaign for a Thanksgiving holiday proved difficult -- Sarah wrote to Zachary Taylor, Millard Filmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and finally Abraham Lincoln -- who re-established Thanksgiving as a legalized annual holiday in 1863. The entire country needed to be unified, so he believed, given the stresses of the ongoing war. Lincoln chose the fourth Thursday of the November, which made sense given the harvest that needed to be done before any celebrating could be done. Most of the population in the country lived on rural farms, so all that work came first.

During the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt actually changed Thanksgiving to the third Thursday to boost the holiday shopping season -- but he soon changed it back in 1942. Thanks, Frank! We get enough Christmas before Thanksgiving as it is. And who doesn't identify with the above painting by Norman Rockwell? Grandma in her apron, bringing the huge turkey to the table, with other dishes ready, and the family eagerly waiting to dig in... Yummm!

HOPE YOU HAD A 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYONE!

Mystery author Meg Mims lives in Southeastern Michigan with her husband and a 'Make My Day' Malti-poo dog. Meg loves writing novels, short novellas and short stories, both contemporary and historical. Her Spur and Laramie Award winning books - Double Crossing and Double or Nothing - are now among the Prairie Rose Publications book list. Meg is also one-half of the D.E. Ireland team writing the Eliza Doolittle & Henry Higgins Mystery series for St. Martin's Minotaur. Wouldn't It Be Deadly, Book 1, is out now! Book 2, Move Your Blooming Corpse, will be out in 2015. You can find Meg (and D.E. Ireland) on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. If you're in the mood for short, sweet Christmas novellas with rescue dogs and cats, check out the following:

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Thanksgiving and the Civil War

By Matthew Pizzolato

Whenever one thinks of Thanksgiving, images of the Pilgrims and Indians and Plymouth come to mind. The first Thanksgiving celebrations in this country were held in Virginia in 1619 and in Plymouth in 1621. It was sporadically celebrated in New England, but it was never an established national holiday. And giving thanks for a successful harvest is nothing new.

The idea that the holiday we celebrate as Thanksgiving came from the Pilgrims and the founding of this country is largely a myth, though there are ties to that event. It was the American Civil War that created the holiday of Thanksgiving.

On October 3, 1863, after the bloody battle of Gettysburg earlier that year, which saw a combined 51,000 causalities, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation declaring a national day of "thanksgiving."

LINCOLN'S THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION
By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation. 

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. 

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. 

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.  

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.  

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union. 

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed. 

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth. 

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

According to Lincoln's intent, Thanksgiving had nothing to do with the Pilgrims and celebrating a successful harvest and everything to do with being thankful for the blessings granted to the nation by "the providence of Almighty God."

The first "Thanksgiving" occurred the following year when Lincoln issued a second proclamation and people organized a feast for Ulysses S. Grant's troops at City Point, Virginia, Grant's headquarters during the siege of Petersburg. Over 400,000 pounds of hams, turkeys and all the trimmings were delivered from New York City to Union soldiers. The citizens of Petersburg, who had been under siege since June, simply starved.

But even after Lincoln's proclamations, it was not until Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law in 1941 that it became the national holiday that is observed today.

Matthew Pizzolato's short stories have been published online and in print. He is a member of Western Fictioneers and his work can be found in the Wolf Creek series as well as his own publications, THE WANTED MAN, OUTLAW and TWO OF A KIND. 

He is the Editor-in-Chief of The Western Online, a magazine dedicated to everything Western. He can be contacted through Twitter @mattpizzolato or via his website: 

www.matthew-pizzolato.com