Dear Whitneys, Just for interest in 1621 Governor William Bradford proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving commemorating the harvest reaped by the Plymouth colony. It wasn't until George Washington proclaimed Thanksgiving as a national holiday that it was celebrated throughout the states other than on a sporadic basis, that was on November 26, 1789. Then Abraham LIncoln revived THanksgiving in 1863. Here is his Proclamation which you might enjoy: THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION Abraham Lincoln, 1863 It is the duty of nations as well as of men to owe their dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations are blessed whose God is the Lord. We know that by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subject to punishments and chastisements in this world. May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins; to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and voice, by the whole American people. 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 as a day of Thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. By the way, I have now connected my Alpheus Spring Chandler Whitney to the following line Joel m. to Jane Corthell-Ephraim m. Sarah Noyes-Joel Sr. m. to Mary Weston-Abel m. to Mary Crane-Nathaniel m. to Sarah Ford-Benjamin m. to Jane-John and Elinor. I had sent a message a couple of weeks ago to the Whitney list. Although I received no responses to my message, I did receive a response to an old message I posted on GenForum quite some time ago so all is well. This was quite a surprise and patience is the virtue that geneology teaches us. Happy THanksgiving to everyone. Rebecca Whitney-Smith, Oregon Happy Thanksgiving, Rebecca Whitney-Smith