"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."

The Thanksgiving Editorials of Sarah Josepha Hale From The Pages of Godey's Lady's Book 

What Was on the Menu at the First Thanksgiving?:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-was-on-the-menu-at-the-first-thanksgiving-511554/#dJsXty2Guwvmq70M.99

https://www.plimoth.org/learn/just-kids/homework-help/who-were-pilgrims

https://www.plimoth.org/learn/just-kids/homework-help/who-are-wampanoag

https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/sarah-hale

https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/thanksgiving

Pigeons potentially served alongside turkey ... venison instead of ham ... maybe a side of eel ... but definitely ...

"... no, the pastry isn't there. That is a blank in the table, for an English eye. So what are they putting on instead? I think meat, meat and more meat."

Kathleen Wall, a culinarian at the Plimoth Patuxet — a "living history Museum" in Massachusetts where the Pilgrims landed in 1620 — explains that they were lacking butter and flour to make pie crust. Their first Thanksgiving in 1621 celebrated surviving their first year in a new land. 

 Today, it's estimated that more than 50 million pumpkin pies are eaten each Thanksgiving! 

Surviving letters from the time period describe hunts for "wildfowl" — likely 

, geese, duck and possibly passenger pigeons (which have been extinct for more than a century).

 (aka DEER) meat was contributed by local Native Americans, the Wampanoag, who helped teach the Pilgrims how to hunt, fish and harvest in the area of modern-day Cape Cod.

Potatoes (not in North America at the time)

Cranberry sauce (not written about for another 50 years — plus, sugar was scarce)

Original poet of "Mary Had A Little Lamb" and editor of women's magazine 

in which she wrote about American issues and customs.

Wrote editorials and petitions for more than two decades, encouraging politicians to make Thanksgiving a national (instead of regional) holiday. In one editorial, she wrote that once every state officially celebrated Thanksgiving, 

Hale's work paid off. A letter to Pres. Lincoln in Sept. 1863 is thought to have inspired his proclamation to make Thanksgiving a national holiday on November's last Thursday. He did this during the Civil War in 1863 (the same year he delivered the Gettysburg Address) as a way to unify the country around a common history. 

Since 1941, after Pres. Roosevelt signed a resolution passed by Congress, Thanksgiving has occurred on the fourth Thursday in November.

Now You Know

The First Thanksgiving Feast

Proclamation of Thanksgiving
"I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who