Remember Sarah

In 1621, famous Pilgrim William Bradford proclaimed a day of feasting to commemorate the first harvest after a long year of suffering. That became America’s first Thanksgiving Day.

But as the colonies grew more prosperous, the people forgot all about Thanksgiving and the meaning it held for their ancestors. The holiday was revived for a time under George Washington, but general interest in it dropped steadily. Finally it was observed in only a few communities, and even that was sporadic and with no set date.

Then a determined woman named Sarah Hale appeared on the scene. She was a young widow from New Hampshire who, in 1822, found herself with five children to support. She turned to literature and became the editor of a women’s magazine. Like most editors, Sarah was a crusader, and it was her belief that the government should make Thanksgiving a national holiday. She pounded away at her idea for years. Three presidents turned her down. But the fourth finally agreed with her, and in 1863, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of every November as our national day of Thanksgiving.

You probably never knew that Sarah Hale did that for you. She is not generally known for her lobbying for Thanksgiving. Her fame rests more on a little ditty she wrote in 1830. You may have heard it; it begins like this:

Mary had a little lamb,

Its fleece was white as snow.