Thanksgiving Day banquet of the American Society in London : Hotel Cecil, London. November 26th, 1896.

  • American Society in London.
Date:
[1896]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Thanksgiving Day banquet of the American Society in London : Hotel Cecil, London. November 26th, 1896. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    a reminder that they had turned over a new leaf. It was a thick leaf, too, and nothing could be read which had been written on the other side. And you remember how obdurately they refused to celebrate Christmas because it was Christ-MASS. No MASS for them ! It is very clear that the year before, just after the landing, they waited intentionally for Christmas that they might begin the framing of their store-house on that day. They set every man to work riving, sawing, splitting, and framing, and, I suppose, for lack of cattle, hauling logs. And Bradford grimly closes his account of this first Christmas by saying So no man rested all that day. To this bit of stubbornness on their part, we owe it happily that we can say that on Christmas Day 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers laid the foundations of an Empire. The first Massachusetts Thanksgiving was nearly ten years after. Poor fellows! They had had no Thanksgiving after getting in the harvest, for they had no harvest to get in. Of the number of Massachusetts emigrants nearly one-tenth died in the first twelve months. I do not suppose anyone starved to death. No one could starve on a shore where there were such oysters, clams, lobsters, and other sea food, and where, on the land, there were deer, moose, turkeys and other birds not yet afraid of fire-arms. But they had practically exhausted the home food to which they were accustomed and the stores which they had brought with them. Mrs. Winthrop was putting her last two loaves into the oven, and the Governor and Assistants had proclaimed a Fast Day. But before Mrs. Winthrop's bread was baked, the look-out on Fort Hill announced that he could see a ship's topmast in the outer harbour. The ship was the Lion, Captain Pearce, fully stored, thanks to Winthrop's prescience of the summer before. And the Governor and the Assistants met hastily and changed their day of fasting and humiliation to a day of public thanksgiving and praise. That was the first Thanksgiving in Massachusetts Bay. These words 1 dictate to a lineal descendant of the Elder Brewster. Wishing you a very pleasant Thanksgiving, dear Stevens, I am, always yours, (signed) EDWARD E. HALE. P.S.—It is worth remembering that this Thanksgiving was on the 22nd of February. The date is one which the Americans at your table are not apt to forget. To Benjamin Franklin Stevens, Esq., American Government Despatch Agent, 4 Trafalgar Square, London.