Thanksgiving 2023 – History of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday in the United States, and Thanksgiving 2023 occurs on Thursday, November 23. In 1621, the Plymouth colonists from England and the Native American Wampanoag people shared an autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. For more than two centuries, days

What Did the Pilgrims Eat at the First Thanksgiving?

Have you ever wondered what the Pilgrims ate at the first Thanksgiving feast in the fall of 1621? We dig into how similar their menu was to the traditional American Thanksgiving meal. The Thanksgiving meal is remarkably consistent in its elements: the turkey, the stuffing, the sweet potatoes, the cranberry sauce. Barring ethical, health, or

Weather on the First Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving travel always makes weather a big concern, so I thought it might be fun to write about weather on the very first Thanksgiving for the Plymouth Pilgrims. Ironically, we know more about the weather than the date itself! We believe that first Thanksgiving feast held by the pilgrims of Plymouth colony in 1621 was

Chris Newell pens children’s book about the ‘Plimoth Thanksgiving,’ from the Native perspective

By his own admission, Chris Newell is not a writer. The former director of the Abbe Museum wrote a book, so he’s a published author. But the process of writing “If You Lived During the Plimoth Thanksgiving,” published last week by Scholastic Press and geared toward kids in first to fourth grades – but appropriate

Why do we eat turkey on Thanksgiving? The history of the holiday tradition

It’s November and you’re probably craving turkey. The fowl has long been the centerpiece of the traditional American Thanksgiving meal, but contrary to tradition, turkey may not have been part of the 1621 feast at Plymouth Colony. Descriptions of the three-day feast shared by the Pilgrims and Native Americans from the local Wampanoag tribe include

Thanksgiving 2020 – Tradition, Origins and Meaning

Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday in the United States, and Thanksgiving 2020 occurs on Thursday, November 26. In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Native Americans shared an autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies. For more than two centuries, days of thanksgiving were

The Pilgrims’ Miserable Journey Aboard the Mayflower

During their two-month journey to America, the Mayflower’s passengers faced cramped quarters, rough seas, limited food and numbing cold. Sailing for more than two months across 3,000 miles of open ocean, the 102 passengers of the Mayflower—including three pregnant women and more than a dozen children—were squeezed below decks in crowded, cold and damp conditions,

Masked Pilgrims: Plimoth Patuxet Museum opens history’s doors for Thanksgiving

It was never going to be an ordinary Thanksgiving Day in 2020. It was intended to be an extraordinary year for Plymouth, filled with civic and worldwide observations of the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival and their founding of a small colony in a safe harbor called “New Plimoth.” The novel coronavirus put an

Who Are the Mayflower Descendants?

Could you be one of the nation’s estimated 35 million Mayflower descendants? Today there are more resources than ever before to help you make the connection. What do Harper Lee, Alec Baldwin, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Amelia Earhart have in common? Ancestry. Each of these famous folks had a distant forebear who was a passenger

America’s Oldest Cemetery | Miles Standish Cemetery in Duxbury, MA

Discover the story of the “America’s Oldest Maintained Cemetery,” the Myles Standish Burying Grounds in Duxbury, Massachusetts, where many Mayflower pilgrims are buried. Tucked away, on a quaint, residential street in Duxbury, Massachusetts, sits a small, unassuming, colonial cemetery. Nearly indistinguishable from the hundreds of other early American burial grounds dotting New England, this secluded