Happy Thanksgiving to those on this side of the pond and below the 49th parallel. (The Canadians celebrated the holiday in October.)

What do whaling ships, a child’s nursery rhyme, a female magazine editor, and Abraham Lincoln have to do with Thanksgiving? An updated repost.

Until the Civil War, Thanksgiving was a sporadically celebrated regional holiday.  Today, Thanksgiving is one of the central creation myths of the founding of the United States, although not universally admired. The story is based on an account of a one-time feast of thanksgiving in the Plymouth colony of Massachusetts during a period of atypically good relations with local tribes. 

The actual history of what happened in 1621 bears little resemblance to what most Americans are taught in grade school, historians say. There was likely no turkey served. There were no feathered headdresses worn. And, initially, there was no effort by the Pilgrims to invite the local Native American tribe to the feast they’d made possible.

Thanksgiving only became a national holiday in 1863.  Before the celebration spread across the country, Thanksgiving was most popular in New England. On 19th-century American whaling ships, which sailed from New England ports, they celebrated only the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Of the three holidays, Thanksgiving may have been the most popular. On Norfolk Island in the Pacific, they also celebrate Thanksgiving, the holiday brought to the island by visiting American whaling ships.

Sarah Josepha Hale was an early booster of Thanksgiving as a national holiday.  Hale was a poet and novelist from New Hampshire. She was also one of the first female magazine editors in the United States.

In 1833, Hale also founded the Seamen’s Aid Society to assist the surviving families of Boston sailors who died at sea. 

She may be best remembered for her nursery rhyme, “Mary’s Lamb” which begins, “Mary had a little lamb, whose fleece was white as snow…..”   

Between 1837 and 1863, Hale wrote editorials and letters arguing that Thanksgiving as a national holiday would help unite the nation.  A letter in 1863 to President Abraham Lincoln is credited with influencing Lincoln’s decision to proclaim Thanksgiving a national holiday in October 1863.

Hale died in 1879 at the age of 91.  By then there weren’t many whale ships left celebrating Thanksgiving at sea.  Nevertheless, in 1943, the Liberty ship # 1538, built by J. A. Jones Construction Company, Panama City, Florida, was named Sarah J. Hale in her honor.