A friend of mine wrote an email to me with the following, thanks Mike:
The Mayflower set sail from England on September 6, 1620,
Captained by Christopher Jones. Originally destined for the mouth
of the Hudson River, to join the English Jamestown Settlement in
Virginia, it landed instead in Provincetown, on Cape Cod,
Massachusetts due to harsh winter storms around the southern tip
of Cape Cod, 66 days later. 102 passengers set sail on that
voyage,
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_passengers_on_the_Mayflower)
two people died and one child was born en route. The majority of
the passengers (37) were members of a partisan religious group,
the Leiden Congregation, who were being actively sought out and
persecuted in England for daring to disagree with the Church of
England on some of its tenants. They fled England to Amsterdam in
1607 and eventually to Leiden, Holland, in search of religious
freedom. The members of the Leiden Congregation were referred to
as "Saints", and the others as "Strangers". The Strangers were
likely members of the Church of England, but wanted to "purify"
the Church of its "worldliness and corruption" and hence were
identified as "Puritans". Others aboard included those looking
for economic gains, some hired by English businesses to set up new
outposts and claims, some family servants and 5 men hired to stay
one year. To establish legal order and to quell increasing strife
within the ranks, the settlers wrote and signed the Mayflower
Compact.
Arriving in winter on Cape Cod, food stores depleted, the
passengers and crew sent out parties to find food. They found
food stores (mostly corn) buried in mounds by the local Indian
tribe, the Nausets. Finding food in these strange buried mounds,
they inadvertently desecrated some sacred burial mounds of the
Nausets, which led to "an encounter" at First Encounter Beach,
Plymouth. Governor William Bradford later writes in "History of
Plymouth Plantation", "only enough corn was taken to survive,
paying the locals back in six months, which they gladly received".
The passengers and crew remained on the Mayflower throughout the
winter. In March of 1621, the settlers departed the ship, only to
have an "astonishing visit" from an Abenaki Indian who spoke
English! He returned several days later with another Indian,
Squanto, a member of the Pawtuxet tribe, who had been kidnapped by
an English sea captain, sold into slavery, escaped to London and
later returned to his native land. Only 53 passengers survived
that first winter, the rest dying of scurvy, pneumonia and
tuberculosis.
The survivors built shelter and homes and begin to plant crops in
the spring, as was their English custom. Squanto taught the
weakened settlers how to cultivate corn, extract sap from maple
trees, avoid poisonous plants and fish the local streams. He also
helped them forge an alliance with the local Wampanoag tribe.
After the harvest, in the autumn of 1621, the settlers had a
celebration as was their English custom, which they called
Thanksgiving. They sent hunters out to collect game for the
feast, called "fowlers". Finding significant waterfowl, they
returned with enough fowl to feed the entire settlement for a
week. They also found large numbers of wild turkey which they
also hunted and brought to the feast. The fledgling colony also
invited its native allies with whom they had forged a bond, the
Wampanoag tribe. The King of the Wampanoag tribe, King
Massasoy(i)t, and 90 of his people joined the settlers in their
feast, and bestowed five slain deer upon the Captain and Governor
of the settlement. The second celebration of Thanksgiving was not
until the autumn of 1623, after a "Providential rainfall"
following a year of drought, and was proclaimed a "Religious
Celebration" by Governor Bradford. But the settlers were not yet
referred to as "Pilgrims".
In 1840, someone likely resurrecting the original phrase of
William Bradford, describing the "Saints" that had left Leiden for
the New World as "Pilgrims", who had quoted Hebrews 11:13-16 of
the Old Testament: "These all died in faith, not having received
the promises, but having seem them afar off, and were persuaded of
them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers
and pilgrims on the earth..."
George Washington issued the first Thanksgiving proclamation by
the national government of the United States. In it, he called
upon Americans to express their gratitude to God for the happy
conclusion to the country's war of independence and the successful
ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Some Presidents thereafter
proclaimed Thanksgivings and others did not. In 1827, a noted
editor and prolific writer of the time, Sarah Josepha Hale, author
of "Mary had a little lamb", began a campaign to establish
Thanksgiving as a national holiday. President Abraham Lincoln
proclaimed the final Thursday in November to be a national
holiday, a day of Thanksgiving in 1863. In it, he entreated all
Americans to: "ask God to commend to His tender care, all those
who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the
lamentable civil strife, and to heal the wounds of the nation".
It remained that day until 1839 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt
moved it up a week, to spur retail sales during the Great
Depression. It became known then as "Franksgiving", and due to
significant opposition, Roosevelt finally acquiesced, reluctantly
signing a Bill marking the fourth Thursday of November the
official day of Thanksgiving, in 1941.
Nearly 90% of American households serve turkey on Thanksgiving.
Parades have also become an integral part of Thanksgiving, since
1924, starting with New York based Macy's department store.
Beginning in the mid 20th century, and possibly before, the
President has "pardoned" one or two turkeys a year, sparing their
harvesting and sending them to a retirement farm. This year,
Obama pardoned four turkeys, none of whom was Rod Blagojevich. In
stately and (ambiguously) religious form, President Obama said:
"This is not the hardest Thanksgiving America has ever faced. But
as long as many members of our American family (sic) are hurting,
we've got to look out for one another". "And as long as many of
our friends and neighbors are looking for work, we've got to do
everything we can to accelerate this recovery and keep our economy
moving forward". A truly inspirational "God bless America".
