{"id":5960,"date":"2020-11-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/400-years-later-i-made-new-discoveries-about-the-first-thanksgiving\/"},"modified":"2020-11-26T18:50:31","modified_gmt":"2020-11-26T18:50:31","slug":"400-years-later-i-made-new-discoveries-about-the-first-thanksgiving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/400-years-later-i-made-new-discoveries-about-the-first-thanksgiving\/","title":{"rendered":"400 Years Later, I Made New Discoveries About The First Thanksgiving"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2F400-years-later-i-made-new-discoveries-about-the-first-thanksgiving%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=5960&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>How do we know about the Pilgrims\u2019 Thanksgiving, and when did we know it? Americans learned for the first time about the Pilgrims from their own writings in 1841 in Alexander Young\u2019s \u201cChronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers.\u201d This book published part of the lost writings of William Bradford and a 1621 letter from Edward Winslow.<\/p>\n<p>These writings had been published in a 1622 long-lost recruiting pamphlet in England but not in America. Because Winslow\u2019s letter described the 1621 Pilgrims\u2019 Thanksgiving, Young declared that the Pilgrims had held the first Thanksgiving in America. This led to an explosion of interest in the Pilgrims and ultimately a widespread branding of the Pilgrims with Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n<p>In the digitized historic newspaper database GenealogyBank.com, I recently found a newspaper article crediting the Pilgrims for Thanksgiving 25 years earlier than previously thought and another that paid homage to them. Richard Pickering, a Plimoth Patuxet historian, told me I\u2019d found new information, \u201cbreadcrumbs to the explosion\u201d of interest in the Pilgrims that came after 1841.<\/p>\n<p>These new findings reveal the pride that New Englanders had in the 1620 Pilgrims and the importance they\u2019d placed in passing down Thanksgiving to new generations. These articles also convey Thanksgiving\u2019s universal meaning and support The Federalist\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2020\/11\/18\/they-sailed-up-out-of-the-infinite-an-introduction-to-the-1620-project\">1620 Project<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis day is our annual public Thanksgiving,\u201d a writer for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/nbshare\/AC01111014165929282711605211508\">Salem Gazette<\/a> began in an article published Nov. 28, 1816. Then the author credited the Pilgrims with Thanksgiving. \u201cIf our pilgrim forefathers, who instituted this religious festival, could give thanks, in a mere temporary hut in the midst of baroness, that they were permitted to \u2018suck nourishment from the treasures in the land,\u2019 how much more should their descendants, who inherit from them a land now \u2018flowing with milk and honey,\u2019 enter with a voice of Thanksgiving and praise?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The same could be said today. The losses we have experienced because of COVID-19 help us better understand the Pilgrims, who lost two to three people a day at one point. Only 52 of the 102 Mayflower Pilgrims survived the first year. Their courage and faith to give thanks despite their hardships can encourage us to give thanks in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>The other newspaper also resonates today because it shows how the 1620 Pilgrims\u2019 boldness, risk-taking, and faith shaped America, which is the purpose of the 1620 Project.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/nbshare\/AC01111014165929282711605914476\">Vermont Intelligencer<\/a> reported in 1817 that New Englanders living in Philadelphia had gathered for a Thanksgiving feast in November 1816. This was a novel event for Pennsylvanians, and lawyer Nathaniel Chauncey gave a speech. Originally from Connecticut, he saw a need \u201cto counteract certain prejudices against the first settlers of New England.\u201d Below are some excerpts.<\/p>\n<h2>Thanksgiving<\/h2>\n<p>\u201cThe occasion which has called us together is particularly interesting to the natives of New England. Their annual Thanksgiving awakens in the aged, a train of the most tender recollections, and offers to mature reason, 1,000 arguments of praise,\u201d Chauncey began. \u201cThe charities of life were thus strengthened and consecrated by their union with religion. Gratitude to God, and love to man, were woven into a texture, which time will never separate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then as now, gratitude and praise required an object. Chauncey, the grandson of Rev. Charles Chauncey, the second president of Harvard College from 1654 to 1672, emphasized the importance of religion in the people\u2019s giving of thanks.<\/p>\n<h2>Courage<\/h2>\n<p>Explaining that they were trying to start Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania, Chauncey drew attention to those \u201cwho established our feast of love,\u201d saying, \u201cIt has descended to us from our ancestors; it was instituted by the settlers of New England.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese men have been much traduced \u2014 their virtues have been forgotten, and the faults of the age in which they lived, have been imputed to them as their peculiar blemish,\u201d he declared of their slander. \u201cSir, they were men of whom the world was not worthy. In their character were combined the hero, the sage, and the saint.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a lesson that bears repeating today, Chauncey explained that the settlers\u2019 valor flowed out of morality. It wasn\u2019t mere brutishness nor blissful ignorance. \u201cTheir courage was not that insensibility to pain, which has been given alike to the strong man and to the strong brute \u2014 nor that blindness to danger, which arises from stupidity or passion \u2014 but it was a grand moral quality,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey had that energy, which, though its subject may be alive to pain, and sagacious to discern danger, presses forward, in spite of both, to the accomplishment of its purposes. They possessed also a still higher courage.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Faith<\/h2>\n<p>It is no surprise then that the settlers\u2019 courage was inextricably tied to their faith. \u201cBut the men of whom I speak showed the courage of piety. They had drank largely of a spirit which God had created eternal, invincible, and immutable,\u201d Chauncey said, detailing several European martyrs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSir, our ancestors were living martyrs,\u201d he said, noting they had endured exile, danger, disease, hunger, cold, and nakedness. \u201cUnder the dictates of conscience, they bore fines and imprisonment and plunder and the risk of life to their native country, anxiety and indigent in Holland, and in the New World the terrors of a desolate wilderness.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe adventurers who landed at Plymouth, half died in the first season from accumulated hardships. But the survivors would not return. They had taken their lives in their hands, and they were prepared for death and its most terrible form,\u201d Chauncey continued. \u201cThese men were soldiers of the Cross, their courage was united with justice and clemency. It was not their plan to rob and exterminate the possessors of the soil. The tract on which they first settled had been depopulated by pestilence, and their other acquisitions were gained by purchase or in wars, which self-defense rendered unavoidable.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>Civil Society<\/h2>\n<p>Laying the groundwork with principles that would eventually compose our nation\u2019s founding documents, the settlers \u201choped to establish a state in which liberty and pure religion should be enjoyed by millions, through a succession of ages. And here they displayed wisdom and foresight, correspondent to their moral greatness,\u201d according to Chauncey.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey cherished and transmitted to posterity the grand principles of representative government,\u201d he continued, noting that New Englanders had established it despite their meagerness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet us cherish the remembrance of their virtues. Permit me, Sir, to propose, the memory of the settlers of New England.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hear! Hear! In Thanksgiving 2020, let us remember the 1620 Pilgrims.<\/p>\n<p>Original from the Federalist: <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2020\/11\/26\/400-years-later-i-made-new-discoveries-about-the-first-thanksgiving\/\">https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2020\/11\/26\/400-years-later-i-made-new-discoveries-about-the-first-thanksgiving\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; How do we know about the Pilgrims\u2019 Thanksgiving, and when did we know it? Americans learned for the first time about the Pilgrims from their own writings in 1841 in Alexander Young\u2019s \u201cChronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers.\u201d This book published part of the lost writings of William Bradford and a 1621 letter from Edward &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2273507,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2273507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}