The First Thanksgiving in America

“We ordaine that this day of our ships arrival, at the place assigned for plantacon, (plantation) in the land of Virginia, shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God.” – Capt. John Woodlief
On Dec. 4, 1619, 38 men came ashore on Virginia’s coast from the ship Margaret in an area they called Berkeley Hundred. They had just endured a stormy and dangerous voyage. In accordance with the instructions given in the charter by the London-based Berkeley Company, these settlers observed the first official English Thanksgiving in the New World.
This Thanksgiving wasn’t a time of feasting, but a time of heartfelt prayer of gratitude. In fact, the men probably ate nothing more than what could be had from the remaining ship’s rations, but some accounts suggest that they did enjoy oysters from the James River.
It was exactly one year and 17 days before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. Their celebration would ultimately be credited with the more commonly known “official” date of Thanksgiving.
People turned to tobacco cultivation, but the king feared it would slow the colonization of the New World. Spain and England had finally reached a peace accord after fighting over land claims in the New World, and while agricultural land was scarce in England, America offered vast tracts of mostly unsettled land. Therefore, the King, seeing the promise of tobacco cultivation in the New World, banned growing it in England. This prohibition caused massive unemployment.
Scores of people were anxious to sail for America. To come to Virginia, they were willing to travel in cramped conditions on ships such as the Margaret, which was a mere 35 feet long (about the size of a bus).
Jamestown’s colony, founded earlier in 1607, occupied swampy land unfavorable to cultivation. Living conditions were wretched, and in the years after its founding, disease and starvation ravaged the settlers. Eleven years after Jamestown was established, four adventuresome gentlemen from Gloucester met in London to propose a business venture.
For their profit venture, William Throckmorton, Richard Berkeley, George Thorpe, and John Smyth (not the John Smith of the Jamestown settlement rescued by Pocahontas) brought settlers to the Berkeley Hundred land patent that King James I had issued to the company. They set them up growing cash crops for sale to the mother country. They needed a seasoned leader, and they found just such a man in John Woodlief, a sea captain and a merchant trader who had been to the New World a number of times. On Sept. 4, 1619, they commissioned him to lead the expedition.
Furthermore, he’d survived the terrible times endured by the Jamestown settlement. Lessons learned from that experience shaped his leadership of the new venture. Right from the start, he determined that this was no expedition for cavaliers or dandies. He sought people with the skills and determination necessary to successfully carve a settlement out of the wilderness. He wanted colonists who practiced crafts: journeymen, joiners, carpenters, smiths, fowlers, and turners. They wouldn’t be afraid of the hard work necessary to establish the settlement.
They initially enjoyed good relations with the members of the Powhatan Confederacy who were their neighbors. The colonists even built the local chief a fine house “in the English manner.”
But not all the Powhatan welcomed the settlers. Opechancanough, the younger brother of Wahunsonacock (more commonly known as Chief Powhatan), had captured John Smith of the Jamestown settlement and brought him before Wahunsonacock years before. Opechancanough’s warriors attacked the Berkeley settlement in 1622, killing many of the settlers. Berkeley Hundred was abandoned, and their celebration of Thanksgiving was all but forgotten.
They described it as a solemn affair—a holy day—not a festival of food such as the Pilgrims celebrated in Massachusetts. In 1958, Virginia Senator John Wicker was instrumental in restarting the annual giving of thanks on the banks of the James River at Berkeley Plantation—a tradition that’s now celebrated every year.
When President John F. Kennedy made his 1962 Thanksgiving proclamation, he credited the Pilgrims with the first observance of Thanksgiving, but failed to mention the Virginia Thanksgiving. Senator Wicker wrote to him, reminding the president of the Virginia observance. In his next Thanksgiving proclamation on Nov. 5, 1963, Kennedy said,
“Over three centuries ago, our forefathers in Virginia and Massachusetts, far from home in a lonely wilderness set aside a time of Thanksgiving. They gave thanks for their safety, the health of their children, the fertility of their fields, for the love which bound them together, and for the faith which united them with their God.”
Sadly, that was President Kennedy’s last Thanksgiving proclamation. He was killed in Dallas just 18 days later.