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Learn about your antiques and collectibles with Georgia Caraway
An American writer named Sarah Josepha Hale, who also happens to be the author of the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” is credited with promoting Thanksgiving as a national holiday. Born in 1788, Hale was a popular editor and became a champion of women of her time. She set standards for taste in topics like cooking, fashion, and literature.
She wrote a novel in 1827 called "Northwood," in which she described what would be the ideal Thanksgiving meal, featuring turkey as the main course: "[It] is considered as an appropriate tribute of gratitude to God to set apart one day of Thanksgiving in each year; and autumn is the time when the overflowing garners of America call for this expression of joyful gratitude."
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For years she wrote editorials encouraging the 150,000 readers of the “Boston Ladies Magazine” and “Godey’s Lady’s Book” to join with her in soliciting support for a Thanksgiving holiday, even writing letters to five presidents. Hale continuously touted her idea of the perfect Thanksgiving, and turkey was always at its center. The bird was as symbolic as the holiday itself: a sign of America as a land of plenty.
Hale’s letter to Abraham Lincoln led to the creation of the holiday. In 1863, in an effort to unify the country in the aftermath of a bitter Civil War, in a proclamation dated October 3, Lincoln invited Americans to "observe the last Thursday of November as a day of thanksgiving.” It wasn't until after Hale's death that the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established Thanksgiving as a legal holiday.
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