When was the first Thanksgiving?
Descendants of settlers say 1619, right here in Virginia
It took a Massachusetts-born U.S. President — John F. Kennedy — to recognize that colonial Virginia had a day of Thanksgiv
Kennedy pronounced in his official Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1963: “Over three centuries ago, our forefathers in Virginia and in Massachusetts, far from home in a lonely wilderness, set aside a time of thanksgiving. On the appointed day, they gave reverent thanks for their safety, for the health of their children, for the fertility of their fields, for the love which bound them together and for the faith which united them with their God.”
So, what was the big deal?
For more than a century, the three-day harvest festival among the Pilgrims and Wampanoag tribesmen, likely between September and mid-November 1621 in colonial Massachusetts, had been recognized as the nation’s first Thanksgiving.
However, in the decade prior to Kennedy’s 1963 proclamation, Virginians loudly declared that the first Thanksgiving in the New World was on the shores of the James River in 1619 and not in Massachusetts in 1621 near Plymouth Rock. But no one listened.
Descendants of those Virginia settlers who arrived at what is now Berkeley Plantation in Charles City County aboard the “good ship Margaret” claimed documentation proved “America’s first official Thanksgiving” in Virginia was nearly two years before Massachusetts’ harvest celebration.
On instructions from The London Co., when the settlers landed at Berkeley Hundred, ship Capt. John Woodlief, in a solemn religious observance, prayed: “We ordaine that this day of our ships arrival, at the place assigned for plantacon, in the land of Virginia, shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of Thanksgiving for Almighty God.”
The documentation was found among the Nibley Papers, a collection of papers and docu
ments compiled by John Smyth, of Nibley, England, on the settlement of Virginia from 1613 to 1674. These papers were rediscovered in the New York Public Library in 1931 by Lyon G. Tyler, retired president of the College of William & Mary.
H. Graham Woodlief of Rockville, president of the Virginia Thanksgiving Festival and a descendant of Capt. Woodlief, wrote several years ago, “Dr. Tyler was the first known scholar to have studied, examined and researched (the papers).” Tyler’s article on April 3, 1931, in the Richmond News Leader was “probably the first time Virginians knew about this important historical event.”
Tyler apparently told his Charles City neighbor Malcolm Jamieson, who owned Berkeley Plantation, about the discovery. Years later in 1956, Jamieson invited descendants of Capt. Woodlief to the plantation to celebrate the Thanksgiving event. Already a number of historic firsts, including the creation of the military bugle melody, taps, had occurred at the famous home of Benjamin Harrison V, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
The 1956 celebration program continued for the next several years and eventually evolved into the Virginia Thanksgiving Festival annually held on the first Sunday of November at Berkeley on its vast front lawn along the James River. (This year’s event was canceled because of COVID-19.)
Virginia state Sen. John J. Wicker Jr. of Richmond, one of the festival founders, took up the First Thanksgiving banner with gusto. According to newspaper accounts he challenged Massachusetts Gov. John A. Volpe in 1961 with the Virginia claim.
Wicker traveled to Boston with a Virginia delegation and they presented Volpe with a turkey and a proclamation “supporting Virginia’s claim to the ‘official’ first Thanksgiving in English-speaking America,” a newspaper account stated.
Volpe was not impressed and countered with encyclopedia references and history books reciting Massachusetts’ harvest festival in Plymouth.
Not deterred, Wicker made an appearance on “The Tonight Show
Starring Johnny Carson.” Dressed as a 17th century settler, he pressed Virginia’s claim. Later in 1962 he chastised President Kennedy for his proclamation citing Massachusetts’ first Thanksgiving.
Harvard University-educated historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., then special assistant to the president, responded to Wicker
with a tongue-in-cheek apology. “I can only plead an unconquerable New England bias on the part of the White House staff,” he said, assuring Wicker the error would not be repeated.
That’s why Virginia was included, along with Massachusetts when Kennedy issued his 1963 proclamation on Nov. 5.
Unfortunately, Virginia’s Thanksgiving recognition was lost. By the time Thanksgiving Day 1963 rolled around on Nov. 28, Kennedy had been assassinated and the nation was in mourning.
By the way, the first presidential proclamation of Thanksgiving was made by George Washington in 1789. It was not, however, until the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 decree that it became an annual tradition. Lincoln called for citizens to “set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of Thanksgiving.”
A cursory examination of presidential Thanksgiving proclamations since 1963 reveals that only four succeeding presidents mentioned Virginia: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964 and 1966; Jimmy Carter, 1979; Ronald Reagan, 1985; and George H.W. Bush, 1990. Most often presidents referred to either the Pilgrims or Washington or Lincoln’s declarations.
Through the years, some Virginians in jest have suggested that Berkeley’s Thanksgiving was neglected because the Pilgrims simply had a better public relations organization and THE Plymouth Rock.