The First Thanksgiving: New at Reason

Where was the first Thanksgiving in the United States actually held?

A. Barton Hinkle writes:

Thanksgiving is a great American tradition. As is disputing the holiday’s origins.

National mythos portrays the first Thanksgiving as taking place in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in celebration of a bountiful harvest. History.com buys into the myth when it refers to “the original 1621 harvest meal”—although it also acknowledges that “for some scholars, the jury is still out on whether the feast at Plymouth really constituted the first Thanksgiving in the United States.”

As a possible contender for the first Thanksgiving on the U.S. mainland, the website cites a 1565 meal of thanks hosted by Spanish explorer Pedro Menéndez de Avilé in Florida. It likewise notes an event that took place “on December 4, 1619, when 38 British settlers reached a site known as Berkeley Hundred on the banks of Virginia’s James River” and “read a proclamation designating the date as ‘a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.’ “

The latter event has given rise to a long-running complaint that Virginia does not get the credit it deserves for kicking off the national holiday. Two years ago retired newspaper executive Graham Woodlief related the origin story (which included an ancestor of his) in the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

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