Governor Bradford of Massachusetts made this first Thanksgiving Proclamation three years after the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth:
“Inasmuch as the great Father has given
us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans,
squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made the forests to abound
with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as He has
protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from
pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according
to the dictates of our own conscience.
Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that
all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye
meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day
time, on Thursday, November 29th, of the year of our Lord one thousand
six hundred and twenty-three and the third year since ye Pilgrims
landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render
thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings.”
About the Author
William Bradford was born in
Austerfield, England in about 1590. He joined the Separatists, a
Puritan religious group who were highly critical of the Church of
England. They were followers of Robert Browne, a preacher who thought
the Church of England should abolish bishops, ecclesiastical courts and
other relics of Roman Catholicism such as kneeling and the use of
priestly vestment and altars. The Separatists also believed that the
government was too tolerant towards those who were guilty of adultery,
drunkenness and breaching the Sabbath.
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