Free Republic

Revisionist histories are nearly always written (or posted to the internet) with an agenda in mind — it's no different for the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving.Four hundred years after the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts in November 1620, this Thanksgiving promises to be the most isolated celebration in living memory. Thanks to the internet, however, virtual gatherings will be possible. Thanksgiving in the age of the internet also means, for many amateur historians, debunking the many myths surrounding the story of the original Thanksgiving. This project of correcting the Thanksgiving legend has picked up steam in recent years. It is part of...

St. Augustine, Florida, is a small city with a lot of “firsts” to its credit. It was the first permanent European settlement in what is now the United States. It was the site of the first Mass in the U.S. It is the place where the first shrine to Our Lady was erected (it stands on the grounds of the Mission Nombre de Dios). It was from here that the first Catholic mission to American Indians was launched. And, now, here comes the surprise — St. Augustine was the site of the first Thanksgiving celebration in America. As you’d...

Subtitle : 'And it happened 50 years before Plymouth!' September 8, 1565. “When the first Spanish settlers landed in what is now St. Augustine on September 8, 1565, to build a settlement, their first act was to hold a religious service to thank God for the safe arrival of the Spanish fleet… After the Mass, Father Francisco Lopez, the Chaplin of the Spanish ships and the first pastor of St. Augustine, stipulated that the natives from the Timucua tribe be fed along with the Spanish settlers, including Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles, the leader of the expedition. It was the...

The Real Story Behind Thanksgiving Did you know that the first [Plymouth Colony Pilgrim's] Thanksgiving was a celebration of the triumph of private property and individual initiative?William Bradford was the governor of the original Pilgrim colony, founded at Plymouth in 1621. The colony was first organized on a communal basis, as their financiers required. Land was owned in common. The Pilgrims farmed communally, too, following the "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" precept.The results were disastrous. Communism didn't work any better 400 years ago than it does today. By 1623, the colony had...

"...and as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea in some sort to our whole nation, let the glorious name of Jehovah have all the praise." Gov. William Bradford, 1640's That is my favorite passage from Bradford's Journal. Two decades after the famous landing of the Mayflower, Bradford sat down to write of Pymouth Colony, in a family journal to pass on to his descendants, relating the period of time from the first beginnings in England, their sojourn in Holland, and their first 20 years in New England. Little did...