Sarah Josepha Hale was a prominent magazine editor, abolitionist and social activist throughout most of the 19th century, perhaps best known for composing the children's nursery rhyme, "Mary Had a Little Lamb." But her most long-lasting effort was her years-long campaign to get the federal government to designate Thanksgiving as a federal holiday. Her decisive tactic? A letter to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.
Holidays are often defined by the foods cooked up in the kitchen, although those foods and how they're prepared change over time. Among the Library's collection of more than 40,000 cookbooks are plenty devoted to the craft of preparing those special occasion meals. But what might have been a great Thanksgiving dinner in 1920 certainly looked different than one in 1965, and Christmas foods are always changing. Different cultures have unique traditions for each holiday, making for an ever-evolving American smorgasbord.
Cary O’Dell at the Library’s National Recording Registry runs our Mystery Photo Contest. His most recent post, a Thanksgiving Edition, included 14 of his last 30 mystery pictures. Here’s his update. Greetings all! Thanks to your hard work over the past month, we solved five of 14 Mystery Photos posted just before Thanksgiving. That’s remarkable, …
After the Union victory at Gettysburg in the Civil War in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln asked the nation set aside the fourth Thursday of November as a national holiday of thanksgiving. Congress made it official in 1870.
