Spanish explorer, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, led 1,500 men in a thanksgiving celebration at the Palo Duro Canyon. Coronado's expedition traveled north from Mexico City in 1540 in search of gold. The group camped alongside the canyon, in the modern-day Texas Panhandle, for two weeks in the spring of 1541. The Texas Society Daughters of the American Colonists commemorated the event as the "first Thanksgiving" in 1959.
French Huguenot colonists celebrated in solemn praise and thanksgiving in a settlement near what is now Jacksonville, Florida. The colony was destroyed by a Spanish raiding party in 1565. This "first Thanksgiving," however, was later commemorated at the Fort Carolina Memorial on the St. Johns River.
English settlers led by Captain George Popham joined Abnaki Indians along Maine's Kennebec River for a harvest feast and prayer meeting. The colonists, living under the Plymouth Company charter, established Fort St. George around the same time as the founding of Virginia's Jamestown colony. Unlike Jamestown, however, this site was abandoned a year later.
Colonists in Jamestown, Virginia held a thanksgiving prayer service after English supply ships arrived with food. The harsh winter of 1609-1610 generated a famine that decimated the settlers. The group was reduced from 490 members to only 60 survivors who were forced to dire measures such as eating their horses. The colonial celebration which followed the arrival of the ships with food has also been considered the "first Thanksgiving."
The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony celebrated the autumn harvest with a three-day feast. Governor William Bradford invited the chief of the Wampanoag tribe, Massasoit, to join the fifty colonists who had survived the harsh winter. The Native American leader brought ninety of his tribesmen to the feast.
The celebration included athletic contests, a military review led by Miles Standish, and a feast on foods such as wild turkeys, duck, geese, venison, lobsters, clams, bass, corn, green vegetables, and dried fruits. In 1841, Dr. Alexander Young contended that this harvest celebration was the "first Thanksgiving," and the origin of an American tradition. This interpretation gained such widespread acceptance that other contenders for the distinction faded into obscurity.
Governor John Winthrop and the members of the Massachusetts Bay colony observed a day of prayer and thanksgiving. Winthrop intended this Puritan settlement to be a model Christian community that would serve as a "city upon a hill," admonishing his colonists:
Wee must be knitt together in this worke as one man, wee must entertaine each other in brotherly Affeccion, wee must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities, for the supply of others necessities, wee must uphold a familiar Commerce together in all meekenes, gentlenes, patience and liberallity, wee must delight in eache other, make others Condicions our owne rejoyce together, mourne together, labour, and suffer together, allwayes haveing before our eyes our Commission and Community in the worke.
The Boston Gazette and Country Journal published a proclamation for a public thanksgiving from the Massachusetts Council-Chamber in Watertown:
Altho' in Consequence of the unnatural, cruel and barbarous Measures, adopted and pursued by the British Administration . . . . We have thought fit . . . to appoint THURSDAY the Twenty-third Day of November . . . to be observed as a Day of public THANKSGIVING, throughout the Colony; . . . .That such a Band of Union, founded upon the best Principles, unites the American Colonies; That our Rights and Priviledges . . . are so far preserved to us, notwithstanding all the Attempts of our barbarous Enemies to deprive us of them. And to offer up humble and fervent Prayers to Almighty GOD, for the whole British Empire; especially for the UNITED AMERICAN COLONIES . . . .
The American colonies ultimately severed all ties with the British Administration with the 1776 Declaration of Independence.
After the U.S. victory over British forces in the October 1777 Battle of Saratoga, the Continental Congress recommended that the colonies observe a day of thanksgiving. The commander-in-chief of the Continental forces, George Washington, issued General Orders setting aside Thursday, December 18 "for Solemn Thanksgiving and Praise."
All thirteen colonies celebrated on December 18 while Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont sponsored additional thanksgiving observances on separate days. The tradition of thanksgiving days sponsored by the Continental Congress continued through 1784 with proclamations such as the October 1782 decree.
The first President of the United States, George Washington, proclaimed November 26th to be a day of national thanksgiving and prayer after receiving Congressional requests for such a decree.
He wrote in his November 26th diary entry: "Being the day appointed for a thanksgiving I went to St. Pauls Chapel though it was most inclement and stormy--but few people at Church." President Washington later provided money, food, and beer to debtors spending the holiday in a New York City jail.
Thanksgiving failed to become an annual tradition at this time. Only Presidents Washington, Adams, and Madison declared national days of thanks in their terms. Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams considered the practice to infringe upon the separation of church and state. Governors, on the other hand--particularly in the New England states, regularly issued proclamations of thanksgiving.
President James Madison proclaimed a national day of prayer and thanksgiving after the end of the War of 1812. U.S. and British emissaries effectively ended the conflict with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent on Christmas Eve, 1814 in Belgium. The treaty restored the prewar boundaries of the U.S. and Canada, but it did not address British violations on the high seas and the imprisonment of American seamen. A joint commission was appointed to address those other concerns.
During the war, President Madison proclaimed three days of fasting and prayer in response to Congressional requests (August 20, 1812, September 9, 1813, and January 12, 1815). He was the last president to call for a national thanksgiving until Abraham Lincoln in 1863.
Godey's Lady's Book editor, Sarah Hale, began a letter-writing campaign to establish the last Thursday in November as a national Thanksgiving Day. Hale began writing essays calling for the national celebration of the holiday as the editor of Boston's Ladies' Magazine in 1827. Godey'smerged with Ladies' Magazine in Philadelphia a decade later and Hale's editorials reached an audience of approximately 150,000 people. In 1846, however, she moved beyond her readership and for the next 17 years directly petitioned state and federal officials. Her perseverance yielded increasing response from state governors and other politicians such as Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Seward.
The Territory of Minnesota celebrated its first Thanksgiving Day on December 26, 1850. The whole territory, including all of what is now the State of Minnesota plus the Dakotas as far west as the Missouri River, contained approximately 6,000 settlers but the book, The Frontier Holiday, describes a spirited celebration. Territory Governor, Alexander Ramsey, proclaimed the day of thanks:
Young in years as a community, we have come into the wilderness, in the midst of savage men and uncultivated nature to found a new empire in aid of our pursuit of happiness, and to extend the area of enlightened republican Liberty . . . . Let us in the public temple of religion, by the fireside and family altar, on the prairie and in the forest, join in the expression of our gratitude, of our devotion to the God who brought our fathers safely through the perils of an early revolution, and who thus continues his favors to the remotest colonies of his sons.
Such sentiments were echoed throughout states and territories in the U.S. as thanksgiving became a national tradition even before it became a national holiday. 
In 1856, Puritan leader William Bradford's 1650 manuscript, "Of Plimoth Plantation," was published after being lost for about eighty years. The document briefly mentions the Plymouth colony's famous 1621 harvest celebration:
Another colonial publication, Mourt's Relation, was rediscovered in the 1820s and included Edward Winslow's detailed first-hand account of the feast:And besids water foule, ther was great store of wild Turkies, of which they took many, besids venison, &c. Besids they had aboute a peck a meale a weeke to a person, or now since harvest, Indean corne to yt proportion.
[A]t which time amongst other Recreations, we exercised our Armes, many of the Indians coming amongst vs . . . with some nintie men, whom for three dayes we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed fiue Deere, which they brought to the Plantation and bestowed upon our Governour, and upon the Captaine, and others.
These documents fueled nineteenth-century interest in the Puritan colony and also influenced the eventual association of the colony with Thanksgiving Day.
Union and Confederate troops celebrated Thanksgiving Day away from their families during the first year of the Civil War. The conflict threatened to permanently divide the nation. Both the Union and Confederate Congresses called for days of thanksgiving after key military victories throughout the war.
In the mid-nineteenth century, storytelling was a favorite feature of the Thanksgiving festivities. Catching up on the year's events turned into the recitation of legendary tales, as distant relatives gathered together on this special occasion. The children's book, Winnie and Walter, or Story-Telling at Thanksgiving, explains, "It was agreed, in order to please the children, that when night was coming on, they should all gather around the bright open fire, in the large sitting-room, and tell stories--not stories which they had heard from others, but stories about themselves."
Magazine editor Sarah Hale wrote a letter to President Abraham Lincoln encouraging him to proclaim a national Thanksgiving Day. This was part of Hale's seventeen-year campaign to establish Thanksgiving Day as a national holiday.
Hale included an editorial she wrote for her Lady's Book magazine and explained that a "national feeling of Thanksgiving" would benefit the country in the midst of the Civil War:
The influence of these state seasons of sacred remembrances, high aspirations, and tender . . . rejoicings would not only be salutary on the character of our own citizens, but the world would be made better . . . . If the germ of good feeling be ever so deeply buried under 'the cares, and riches, and pleasures of this life,' it may be brought out by sympathy and vivified by culture and effort.
President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November to be Thanksgiving Day. The decree only technically affected the District of Columbia and federal employees but governors throughout the Union followed suit with similar state proclamations.
Lincoln issued a similar proclamation in 1864. With the exception of Andrew Johnson designating the first Thursday in December as Thanksgiving Day 1865 and Ulysses Grant choosing the third Thursday for Thanksgiving Day 1869, U.S. presidents maintained the holiday until Franklin Roosevelt broke with tradition in 1939.
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