DISCOVERY CHANNEL NEWS

Next Up For Thanksgiving Pardon: Ginny The Pig?

By Jennifer Viegas
Wednesday, November 21st, 2007

She's no Thanksgiving turkey, but a Virginia Zoo pig named Ginny is awaiting a presidential pardon.

A growing number of historians are concluding that the first Thanksgiving — or at least the first English-style Thanksgiving — was celebrated in Virginia in 1619. That was two years before the Pilgrims sat down at Plymouth, Mass., the event long thought of as the original feast.

While the menu remains unknown, it's believed that no turkey and dressing were served. The mealtook place along the James River, between what are now the cities of Richmond and Williamsburg, Va.

"They likely consumed a lot of seafood, including oysters, and some kind of preserved pork meat, such as ham or bacon," said Peggy DeBellis Bruce, president of the Virginia Thanksgiving Festival, which recreates the event annually at the Berkeley Plantation alongside the river.

"We also think they drank cinnamon water," she added, explaining that the beverage would have tasted like a spicy tea.

This week, President George Bush visited the site but stopped short of agreeing that it was indeed the site of the first British colonial Thanksgiving. President Kennedy, more than four decades earlier, admitted through an apology issued by White House advisor Arthur Schlesinger Jr. that "unconquerable New England bias on the part of the White House staff" had led to the error.

The First Celebrants?

The turkey-less tale goes back to 1619, when Captain John Woodlief and a crew of 37 men set sail on The Margaret for America. Bruce explained to Discovery News that the earlier Jamestown group was "not very successful because it mostly consisted of gentry who didn't want to work." Woodlief's men were mostly craftsmen, such as ship builders and blacksmiths.

Called the Berkeley Hundred, Woodlief and his men were granted permission to settle an 8,000-acre plantation in Virginia. The captain's wife, two children, and four indentured servants arrived first at the site. Woodlief, however, endured a near 3-month voyage on the 35-foot-long The Margaret, which, Bruce says, "wouldn't have even allowed the men to stand shoulder to shoulder."

The Berkeley Hundred's charter, which survives today, included a proclamation from the Virginia Company that reads, "Wee ordaine that the day of our ships arrivall at the place assigned for plantatcon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually keept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God."

Lincoln Alters Path of Thanksgiving History

Fast forward to a century and a half ago, when Boston's Sarah J. Hale, the author of "Mary Had a Little Lamb," asked then President Abraham Lincoln to create a day of national thanks in honor of the Pilgrims. Hoping to unify the country, Lincoln agreed. The rest is history, even if incorrect.

"Lincoln went north instead of south for Thanksgiving, so to speak," Bruce told Discovery News. "He simply didn't want to split the country further after the Civil War."

Earlier this month in an editorial for the Richmond-Times Dispatch, former Virginia governor Gerald Baliles wrote, "Let us not allow Virginia's First Thanksgiving to languish in the mists of time. It could, should, and ought to be the gift of history that never stops giving."

More than 6,000 schoolchildren in the state have since signed a petition asking the president to pardon Ginny the pig. President Bush has yet to do that, but locals welcomed his Berkeley Plantation visit this week.

Paper Proof?

Another interesting twist to the story is that additional documentation supporting this first historic meal remains relatively forgotten in a collection called The Smyth of Nibley Papers, 1613-1674, now housed at the New York Public Library.

William Stigone, a manuscripts and archives expert at the library, said the papers include a "brief, vague reference" to the likely first English colonial Thanksgiving, but no direct mention of the celebration.

The papers are quite rare, since most documentation, including the men who wrote it, perished during the Jamestown Massacre in 1622. John Nibley and Woodlief were away from the region at the time, and so their legacy, through ancestors and manuscripts, survives.

Other Possibilities

Further complicating the issue is that meals of thanks were also celebrated by the Native Americans hundreds of years before any colonists arrived. Spanish expeditions also celebrated such events in Texas and Florida during the late 16th century. Maine historians also point out that explorer George Weymouth, who wrote of harvesting "peas and barley" in 1605, could very well lay claim to the first official Thanksgiving.

In the end, the history might not even matter.

"Wherever you're from, Thanksgiving promotes a sense of pride," Bruce said. "It's not necessarily about who was first, but more about remembering and honoring our ancestors who worked so hard, allowing us to enjoy the celebration as we know it. I don't think they would have survived if they didn't have a higher power to believe in and for whom they could have offered thanks."