Thanksgiving in history...........

William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth Colony, Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1623


"Inasmuch as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, beans, squashes, and garden vegetables, and has made forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as He 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 little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 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 he Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all his blessings."