The FIRST Thanksgiving was held 1619 in VIRGINIA, led by our own CAPT JOHN WOODLIEF of Peterly Manor, nr Prestwood, Gr Missenden, Bucks, Engl.
Thanksgiving at Berkley Plantation.
Despite the popular conception that New Englanders held the first Thanksgiving, the first Thanksgiving in English-speaking America actually took place in Virginia - more than a year before the Mayflower set sail for Plymouth.
Massachusetts-native President John F. Kennedy acknowledged Virginia’s claim in his official Thanksgiving Day Proclamation for 1963 - less than three weeks before his death; and 100 years before that, President Abraham Lincoln, who visited Berkeley once, also acknowledged Virginia’s first-Thanksgiving claim. To this day, Virginia continues to commemorate its noteworthy event the first Sunday each November at Berkeley Plantation, the original Thanksgiving site.
The First Thanksgiving at Berkeley
History records that the first Thanksgiving occurred when Captain John Woodlief - a veteran of Jamestown who had survived its “starving time” of 1608 and 1609 - led his crew and passengers from their ship to a grassy slope along the James River for the New World’s first Thanksgiving service on Dec. 4, 1619. There, the English colonists dropped to their knees and prayed as the British company expedition sponsor had instructed.
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