Timeline of Thanksgiving in America

• 1541 – Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, a Roman Catholic, led a Thanksgiving Communion celebration at the Palo Duro Canyon, TX.

• 1565 – Pedro Menendez de Aviles and 800 settlers, also Roman Catholic, gathered for a Thanksgiving meal with the Timucuan Indians in the Spanish colony of St. Augustine, FL.

Then…

• 1621 – Pilgrims (Puritans) and Native Americans celebrated a harvest feast in Plymouth, MA. This harvest feast was never repeated. Oddly enough, most devoutly religious pilgrims observed a day of thanksgiving with prayer and fasting, not feasting.

• 1630 – Settlers observed the first Thanksgiving of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England on July 8.

• 1777 – George Washington and his army, on the way to Valley Forge, stopped in open fields to observe the first Thanksgiving of the United States of America.

• 1789 – President Washington declared November 26 as a national day of “thanksgiving and prayer.”

• Early 1800s – The annual presidential thanksgiving proclamations ceased for 45 years.

• 1863 – President Abraham Lincoln resumed the tradition of Thanksgiving proclamations and has since been observed annually in the United States.

Mark Corcoran