Some fun facts about Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims

[MrBenchley]

--The Pilgrims' first attempt at a colony in New England, the Popham Colony in Maine in 1608, lasted just one year.

--The first successful New England colony, the Plymouth Colony, were not Puritans.

--The Plymouth colonists sailed in April of 1620 and landed in December, and as a result missed the growing season and nearly starved to death.

--The Plymouth colonists had two ships, the Mayflower and the Speedwell. The Speedwell was unseaworthy and had to stay in England.

--The first informal Thanksgiving probably occurred in late September/early October (nobody bothered to write down the date) and lasted three days. Then they didn't bother to have another one.

--The Plymouth Colony was settled at a place the Indians called Pawtuxet, which they had abandoned due to plague (perhaps brought by European fishermen).

--The Massachusetts Bay Colony, which founded Boston, was mostly, but not all Puritans.

--The Puritans had earlier tried to leave England for Amsterdam; New England was an alternative.

--Governor John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay signed the first Thanksgiving decree marking the occasion as a formal holiday: July 8, 1630.

--The first November Thanksgiving in the US was proclaimed by President George Washington on November 26, 1789; his proclamation made no mention whatsoever of the Pilgrims. Some subsequent Presidents viewed a yearly Thanksgiving proclamation as a tradition, but some, most notablyThomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams, did not bother with the holiday.

--Americans themselves generally really didn't give much of a rats ass about the Pilgrims until Daniel Webster made a wowser of a speech about them in 1820.